Please help: Moved in to house with no aerial signal. Cable? What are the options?

Mark_In_Hampshire

In some areas, Virgin Media (as was, back in the day - can't remember what the franchise was called in my area) bought up the local cable service and it formed part of their network subject to an agreement that they carried on providing boxes and Freeview for free to residents.

That was the case in Harlow, Essex - new town, idea was to have no aerials on the roofs, all supplied by cable.

So on the million to one chance you're in such an area, that might be why there's no aerial.

Think it costs about £60 to get one fitted.

Is the one you have an FM aerial?

Colin_London

BaconandEggs,

Firstly, are you trying to watch Analogue or Digital Television via the wall socket?

If Analogue: Have you moved to an area where there has been digital switchover? If so you can only watch via a Freeview enabled TV or Set Top Box so you'll need to buy one.

If you are sure that you are in an area which still has Analogue TV, have you tried retuning the TV? The frequencies in use at the new house location could well be very different from those stored in the TV from the last house.

If you are trying to watch Freeview Digital TV: Again, the frequencies in use at the new location could well be different to the old house. You'll need to do a full rescan of the freeview TV or Set Top Box to watch digital TV again.

If these suggestions do not work let us know what area you now live in and we may be able to help further.

BaconandEggs

UPDATE:

First of all, thank you to everyone who has posted.

To clarify a couple of things -
- I removed the front of the socket on the wall. This is where a black aerial cable (linked to the metal socket on the front) was located IN ADDITION to a brown coax cable (which did not have an attachment on the end). Based on what was posted here I assumed the brown cable was from one of the aerials on the roof. At the time of the original post, I was not sure why I was getting no signal from the black cable and (stupidly?) assumed it was because it was for "cable" service e.g. Virgin media etc.
- My testing of the black cable consisted of tuning 2 TV (analogue) and 1 Freeview digibox (at the time there were analogue and digital signals in my area (although I think the analogue signal has just been switched off).

It is now working and we are getting a crystal clear digital signal, with a couple of extra channels than we had before.

Here is what happened (I do feel a bit stupid tbh):

The brown cable was from the old aerial on the roof.
The black cable was from a recently fitted aerial.
The previous owners removed the amplifier.
When one was plugged in we got a signal from the socket I've been referring to and also from the other sockets in the house.

Doh!

Thanks all.

BaconandEggs

btw, I got some prices from Virgin media when I rang them, and I'm glad I got the old Freeview working as I didn't fancy paying in the region of £10 extra for channels that we would rarely watch.

I will have to wait and see if our copper phonelines mean that it would be worth going for cable broadband.