Digital Aerials & TV Type

silentotter

I am going to be changing to BT Vision from Sky soon and BT have advised me that I will need to get a digital aerial. I have been getting digital Sky tv through my old television which isn't digital.

Will I need to buy a new digital tv when the digital aerial is fitted or will it and BT Vision work through my existing television?

macman

Then BT are idiots, because there is no such thing as a 'digital aerial'. You simply need a working rooftop aerial pointing in the right direction.
Yes you can display BT Vision through any TV to which you can link the Vision box-the tuner is in the box and simply passes the signal on.
Bear in mind that BTV is nothing more a Freeview service with some added on-demand content via your broadband connection.

Kurtis_Blue

Existing TV will be fine to watch BT vision.

Before the pedants jump on it there is no such thing as a digital aerial, however your current installation will need to be good enough to receive the digital muxes/channels the only way to tell is via a meter or once the stb is in place.

To find out the strength of the digital signal at your property goto http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/ and enter your property details.

Fifer

Different TV channels are broadcast on different frequencies in different areas to avoid transmitters in adjoining areas interfering with each other. In the days of analogue only TV, the five frequencies used for the 5 TV channels in an area were called a group, and TV aerials for that area were tightly tuned to receive those frequencies particularly strongly. Unfortunately, the frequencies used in those areas for digital terrestrial transmissions did not always fall into the same group, so some digital channels might be difficult to receive in lower signal areas without changing the aerial. If another aerial was needed, people tended to be sold 'wideband' aerials which receive a wider range of frequencies, but not quite so strongly as the highly tuned group aerial - there is a trade off between strength of reception and range of frequencies received. These compromise wideband aerials (jacks of all trade and masters of none) are often incorrectly referred to as digital aerials as they tend to be sold as a solution for receiving digital TV.

If you live in a reasonably strong signal area, you probably won't have to change your aerial. You definitely won't have to change your TV (unless it is so old, it doesn't have a SCART socket). To complicate matters, after the digital switchover, the digital terrestrial signal power is being increased which will help people whose aerials are marginal now.

Chimpofdoom

Actually one thing to note is.. make sure you can get BT vision. A couple of family friends were recently sold it by BT's monkey's. Asked me to set it up and did so, only to find out that in their area.. you can't get BT vision.