Tv and aerial question

sonsbear

I want to get a tv for my bedroom but what do I do about an aerial. Do I need to get one put in (have roof aerial for downstairs tv) and if so how much will it cost roughly or will an indoor one do the job and what should I look for in choosing one?

Many thanks.

gbellamy

TV Senders are great these days and no need for any aerial. Have a google on them.

kwikbreaks

It's pretty much impossible to answer this without knowing how good TV signal is where you live.

If an indoor aerial won't work you could either install a separate aerial for this TV (maybe screwed on the wall if the direction works out well) or share the existing aerial - whether or not than could be done with a simple splitter or would need an aerial amp again depends on how good the signal is.

Asking your neighbours what they do would be a good start or simply looking at the size of aerials in use around you to see how big they are would help.

totalsolutions

If the bedroom is upstairs and you have loft access then then best way to go is have a powered distribution unit in the loft and feed the roof aerial to it and have several outputs to other rooms.

sonsbear

kwikbreaks wrote: »

It's pretty much impossible to answer this without knowing how good TV signal is where you live.

If an indoor aerial won't work you could either install a separate aerial for this TV (maybe screwed on the wall if the direction works out well) or share the existing aerial - whether or not than could be done with a simple splitter or would need an aerial amp again depends on how good the signal is.

Asking your neighbours what they do would be a good start or simply looking at the size of aerials in use around you to see how big they are would help.

Reception not great. Freeview often breaks up and in bad weather have to give up watching it. My aerial was installed only last year and it is as tall as it is possible to be!

All the houses in our road are different so I'm next to bungalows. Mine is a chalet style so I've got an upstairs. Further up the road there are some houses.

kwikbreaks

Given that then there is no chance that an indoor aerial will be up to the job and as passive splitters cut the signal level fitting one would probably screw up what you already have.

What you need is an aerial amplifier with multiple outlets to feed multiple TVs from your existing aerial. The nearer you can fit this to the aerial (in terms of coax length) the better it will work so up in the loft would be good so long as you can arrange power to it. You'll need to re-route the existing coax to where you've put the amp then take coaxes from that to the two TVs. If you think there is any chance you'll want more TVs later get a 4 output amp rather than two output.

The good news is that the country is slowly swapping over to digital only and when analogue is shutdown in your area the strength of the digital signals will be increased.

As an aside the amp may help your current setup if you currently have a long run of coax. Fitting one at the bottom of a long run rarely improves anything but having it near the aerial improves the signal to noise ratio which is what really counts rather than the absolute signal level.