My old aerial (not specifically digital) is pointing in the direction of the Sudbury transmitter and I cannot receive any ITV or Channel 4 channels except E4+1. anyone know if these channels are being broadcast from Sudbury. All the channels I do receive 71 in total (44 TV) have good signal strength and are good quality. Should I buy a new aerial? I using the SONY receiver.
Mart> >>Incidentally, I already use a feed off the (now broken) aerial for the
Which Sudbury? Anyway, start here...
Not true.
Antenna gain is noiseless. You only get noise when you introduce amplification using electronics.
I will be happy to be proved wrong though :-)
Dave
It depends on what you class as "noise". High gain antennae tend to pick up signals from other sources than the intended transmitter - many class these signals as noise (they are included in calculations for SNR)
Your local riggers have to pay for advertising, a van, loads of insurance, somewhere to store the gear etc. etc. Plus they have enough experience, often hard-won, to handle problems when they come up against them. If it was dead easy, people couldn't make a living out of it. Like a lot of things, really.
BB
Top one is an Antiference XG see below for price compered to standard .
Of course, no complaints with that. I wasn't querying the cost of their labour/expertise, it was whether the digital aerial which they were suggesting was (a) justified and (b) genuinely cost about 50 quid more than the analogue equivalent. From what others have said it sounds like that's a 'yes' on both fronts.
David
Which Sudbury? London or Suffolk?
I get all MUXES from Sudbury on a sony receiver. 10-12 miles away..
I use a loft mounted analog spec aerial.
I think a lot depends where you are...its fairly up and down contour wise.
I bougfht an aerial from a place that specialises in TV installations. The expensive ones were 18 quid, the less expensive one was 11 quid.
I am using the 11 quid one with toal success.
In a fancy box in a shed the same aerial goes for around 45 quid.
Well the answer is yes and no.
Any in and noise will be subject to extra boosting, but so what - in band noise is not somethug yoiu cabdo anything about anyway.
No extra noise will be added of course, other than by the actual resistance of the antenna and its drop cable...
So depending on how you interepret 'get more noise' the answer can be yes or no, buit with the addendum that it matters not a sod anyway.
The idea of an antenna is to do two things
- get as much signal into the first amplification stage as possible so that the input signal is well above the amplification noise floor.
- provide much greater gain for the wanted signal than other unwanted ones, so as to reduce ghosting and out of band interference.
n very high signal areas and with digital setups there is no point in going beyind a certain point on the first count =- either you have an adequacy of signal or you don't. If you don't you get pixellation and/or a loss of signal altogether.
Likewise with digital the finer nuances of tuning the antenna for rejection of multipath off fixed objecst (as opposed to aircraft) are uncesseary: As long as te reflections are about 10-20dB less than the main signal, the digital decoder is likely to ignore them.
This makes the issue of a digital aerial pretty simple. You simply need to get a good strong signal and provided its not _totally _being interfered with it will decode well.
All teh thiungs that are releavnt in an analogue aerial - ghosting, narrow beam, etc, overoading of te front end etc - are almost completely irrelevant BELOW A CERTAIN :LEVEL. The digital takes care of all of it.
Increasing signal quality beyind what is required by sticking a ruddy great array of whatever up a mile high pole is as useful as using red dye on your CD's to get better sound quailty.
Use of high gain or narrow beam antennae is pretty spurious as is high quality downlead. I've gt the best downlead there is, and I still get pickup of sparking contacts in the house thermostats.,.
So don't get carried away with your digital aerial. Either your are one of the 99% of peple who are withing decent range and you will simply connect up and get a perfect signal, or you are one of the marginal one percent who will need to spend money and care on an installation of some complexity.
Of course every rigger in the book will be telling you a load of bullshit and trying to sell you gold plated connectors, ultra expensive drop cables and the biggest load of pigeon rooster he can find in his trade catalogues, all at 100% markup, but that doesn't mean you NEED it.
This one!...
A quick mental tot up says around 15m. I think there is one permanent splice.
This would be possible. the run is outside until it comes in under the suspended floor, so I could easily stick an IP65 box on teh outside of the house and join the two parts.
Thanks for the comments - I do at least feel like there is some hope now!
mother-in-law's reception was so bad (she lives *in* Sudbury, on the top of a hill...)
I'm about 14 miles away but I have noticed my aerial is about 15 degrees offset from all the neighbours so maybe I'll try and swing it in the right direction.
Try posting over on uk.tech.digital.tv where this argument is known to rage on a bit;;.
A digital aerial is more expensive than an analogue one because the public perceives it as such... otherwise their much the same thing..
A bit of marketing bollokx for the aerial rigging trade;=-!!
Don't be silly - you need to freeze them and scribble on them with green pen :-)
"Digital" is just code for wideband, which is (a) rarely required for analogue transmissions that are designed to be in in-band (except maybe Channel 5) and (b) requires considerable redesign (specifically of Yagi arrays) to achieve satisfactory results.
Christian.
A digital spec aerial is a great deal more than just a "wideband". In fact an aerial can have been passed as conforming without being wideband. The differences are manyfold, not the least of which is the prescence of a balun.
I'll get my tinfoil hat on then..
Remind me never to have uou install an aerial..
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