No TV aerial in my house - solutions?

redrabbit29

I live in a terraced house, which is on top of a ground floor flat - so the property Itself is essentially over 3 floors.

About 3 houses down there is a tv aerial which maybe for our row of houses but I'm not sure.

There is a tv socket in the living room which doesn't appear to work. I have sky tv downstairs - but no where else

Basically - I want TV signal in the upstairs so that me and my house are can watch different things.

What's easiest?


1) get a new tv aerial?
2) get someone out to try to workout what the other one is for?

Or what?

Btw my house is mortgaged and on a leasehold although TV is our responsibility

macman

You don't have an aerial for a 'row of houses', you need one per house or flat.
If there is no aerial, you'll need one installing to get any terrestial reception. Or the cabling may be missing/faulty.
Or you can run an additional feed from your Sky dish, and use any old Sky box to get the Freesat from Sky channels (assuming you don't want the subscription channels on both TV's, which would require a Multiroom sub).

spike7451

macman wrote: »

You don't have an aerial for a 'row of houses', you need one per house or flat.
If there is no aerial, you'll need one installing to get any terrestial reception. Or the cabling may be missing/faulty.
Or you can run an additional feed from your Sky dish, and use any old Sky box to get the Freesat from Sky channels (assuming you don't want the subscription channels on both TV's, which would require a Multiroom sub).

Sky might refer the job to an external contractor if the dish is too high or the OP's flat is,certainly Special Heights would be required as OP's on 3rd floor.

SailorSam

If you only want a terrestrial ariel you could get one from the likes of Wilkies and fit it yourself in the loft, you should get good reception without the need to go up on the roof.

macman

A loft aerial may or may not provide sufficient strength for digital reception.

spike7451

macman wrote: »

A loft aerial may or may not provide sufficient strength for digital reception.

OP may also have no access to the loft to fit an aerial,plus I doubt the building owner would like the OP installing cables stuff without his permission.

penrhyn

Don't forget you'll need a TV licence if you intend to start watching live TV.

redrabbit29

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I live in a house - not a flat, and it's not really 3 stories. From the outside, it looks like a house. I open my front door, and there are stairs immediately there, up the stairs I'm on the ground floor, then more stairs to the top floor. The sky dish is easily accessible as it's only about 12 feet in the air on the side of the building.

I've looked on Maplin and there are loads of Aerials suitable for the loft.

Couple of questions:

1) If i put the aerial in, how would I feed the wire down into the rooms, do you normally locate acupboard or something, and then drill down the ceiling into the cupboard?

2) what aerial?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/buy-tv-and-satellite/aerials/outdoor-tv-aerials

E.g. there are Tri-fold 43-element, or 91 element, 18 element wide band... etc...

I'm willing to pay about £50.



3) do you think this is something that I'd be able to install myself?


ADDITIONALLY

In the living room I have a aerial socket in the wall, which has a wire leading into it, but it doesn't produce a signal as I've tried tuning a TV into it.



Thanks,
Redrabbit

macman

What's the point in fiting a new aerial if you already have one? Get an engineer in to sort the existing install. At worst you will need an external aerial, a loft aerial cannot be guaranteed to be sufficient for digital reception.
Or run the extra LNB feed as described to get Fresat From Sky.

Enterprise_1701C

Have you looked in the loft to see if there is an aerial, or to see if the aerial lead is laying on the floor up there? If it is it will simplify fitting a new aerial.

111KAB

Daughter had a similar problem (rented London flat) and I purchased an indoor digital aerial from Currys/PC World. I have had these things before and they have NEVER worked so I was very dubious but guy said bring it back/money back if it doesn't work. She is on the first floor of a four storey block > absolutely brilliant. Cost around £40 from memory.