Poor TV Aerial Reception -

Financial_Savvy

I have been struggling for a while with poor digital TV aerial signal.

The digital aerial is in the loft and goes into a amplifer box from a light socket. I have swapped the aerial in the loft and it is still a bit poor - in the end I got so feed up of this I got sky!

However I was thinking about getting one of the digitial signal test machines - they are £15 http://www.screwfix.com/prods/58244/Electrical-Supplies/TV-Range/Aerials-Fixings/Six-Digital-Signal-Finder

Question is, can I use this to test the signal at the end of the coax cable in the lounge? I think the problem may be due to the number of joins in the cable, as the TV is wall mounted and is run in sections around the room which are joined together. Is this one reason for poor reception?

Help is appreciated.

eco-friendly_2

Spend your £15 on a good quality co-ax, every time you make a join you lose signal-regardless of the method used, fitting the aerial outside would be a better bet, if possible.

ormus

depends where you are. around here an aerial in the loft is perfectly ok.
the co-ax cable is pretty crucial. make sure its decent quality, at least cat100.
try and use it with no joints at all. any joints and or splitters will give you problems.

ps
my computer freeview tv usb device, works with a simple thin cable and a 4 inch aerial!

SailorSam

After the Digital changeover the other week when i retuned the 'Freebox' i'm sure it came up on the screen to say how good the reception was, as a percentage.

Inactive

Financial_Savvy wrote: »

Question is, can I use this to test the signal at the end of the coax cable in the lounge? I think the problem may be due to the number of joins in the cable, as the TV is wall mounted and is run in sections around the room which are joined together. Is this one reason for poor reception?

Replace the cable with non joined cable, any join will reduce signal, don't waste your money on Maplin tacky Signal Meters.

Financial_Savvy

Thanks for the replies. the problem I have is that the aerial socket in the lounge is the other side of the room to the TV. So I have coax going around the room under the carpet. It then stops and joins to another piece of coax that goes behind the wall to the TV, and then another join between this and the TV.

Although I have built in freeview I thought what about a freebox with HDMI as I have run 1 HDMI cable behind the wall. I was going to connect this with a HDMI splitter.

Are HDMI splitters any good?