Anyone recomend a Digital TV aeriel?

Yes and no...

Any CAI certified aerial will have a balun. It will also have been proven to be able to pass the digital signals without significant data corruption.

I think the reason there are "Digital" aerials is to differentiate between certified and non certified types. Bear in mind that because analogue degrades gracefully, you can often get away with any old contractor crap and still get acceptable signals. Not the case with a digital service.

More totally misleading bull from Foggy Dewhurst.

A 'digital' aerial is simply one with a wide enough frequency response to suit the digital channel spacing in the area in question.

In many areas the old analogue one is perfectly adequate, if not especially optimum.

Whether its certified or not has no bearing on either whether its good for digital reception, or in fact is any good at all.

Ours works.

Thought digital was more robust to some kinds of signal problems?

On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:41:42 +0100 someone who may be "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote this:-

The difference is that analogue degrades gracefully. Digital tends to either work or not work, there is little between other than some popping noises on the audio and some picture freezing between the two states.

There is also the question of analogue having far more bandwidth which means it can cope with certain types of shot well, while the sort of digital systems we have in mass use cannot do so.

Depends on what you mean by 'gracefully'. On a domestic installation in most parts of the country using the correct aerial this is irrelevant. Unless you actually like watching multiple images through a layer of snow. With hissy sound.

Which for most is a good thing.

I'm not sure what you mean - but it's not got anything to do with aerials.

It is for some - like multipath - but not all.

Another question:

I get 'TNT' (French version of digital terrestrial) using an aerial which is similar to an oblong box about 8'' x 4'' sited on the inside window ledge. The signal goes via a powered amplifier into a set top box.

Would it be possible to use this type of aerial indoors in the UK eg in the loft. (to get UK stations I mean) :) The aerial we have in the loft at the moment is a 'normal' one

John

dennis@home laid this down on his screen :

That might well be true once analogue is turned off and the power of digital is increased, but for the moment digital muxes are quite weak. As distance from both signal sources is increased, digital is always the first to become completely unusable.

In article , Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics) scribeth thus

A balun is just a balanced to unbalanced conversion device I can't quite see how it will corrupt the bits;)..

Not strictly scientific is that ?. More clever marketing for the aerial industry and a chance to make a few quid;)..

In article , David Hansen scribeth thus

Can you explain that please .. "shot well"?....

I'm getting very poor Freeview reception. I expect I need a better aerial, but I would like to mount it in the loft for ease of access.

Is it possible to get better reception with a very good loft aerial than with a crappy old small aerial mounted on the chimney stack? I know that a very good aerial on the chimney stack would be better still, but I would like to do it myself so only the loft would be practicable.

Depends where you are. If you're just over the road from Crystal Palace a bent paper clip will probably work. If a deep valley in the wilds of the Highlands, nothing will help!

A postcode checker was mentioned earlier in this thread.

Andy

The suspense is killing me - What is George's sister going to have after the digital changeover?

But for some people that is very uncertain. Although living near a transmitter, its transmissions go over our heads! Hence analogue reception is terrible. No idea if that will change at all when digital is installed there - whether at reduced or full power.

He said "it can cope with certain types of shot well", which I took to mean camera shot. Ie. low bitrate giving rise to motion artefacts etc. on fast moving subjects, flowing water, etc. etc.

The postcode checker was useless for us. We are in East Kent (CT6) and the checker told us we would be using the Bluebell Hill transmitter just south of Rochester. The signal was terrible, so I tried the Dover one instead; this wouldn't work for all of the postcode, but we're about 20m ASL which is enough to 'see' Dover. Much, much better.

I too went for a loft solution, which works fine (OK, there's a preamp up there). Used a Televes 45 element wideband (bought because the transmitter muxes are widely separated). Works fine on a cheap Freeview box.

No, you are getting confused by the child shrink. The Science Officer on the Enterprise was plain Mister.