Poor TV reception due to huge trees

abbas5001

Hey,

Just recently moved into a new house and our reception for standard analogue TV is poor and I plugged in our existing freeview box and its unable to detect anything. Also, got the sky guy round and he says its highly unlikely we can get sky in because of the massive trees around the house, however the said it might be possible if we placed the dish at a particular position and managed to cut off some of tree (but the tree is out of our boundary, but some of it extends into our garden). We asked another guy if he would be able to put up a new antenna so we could just get basic Freeview but he also said it was pretty unlikely

My dad asked the previous owner whether everything was ok with TV and everything and she said it was fine (damn her!). Just wondering if any other options may be available to us other than just getting cable such as Virgin Media?

Thanks

robowen

My nan had the same problem.
She was unlucky and lucky at the same time :think:
Lucky, that if we turned the aerial round a bit to avoid the trees, we could get a different signal from another broadcasting aerial.

She was unlucky because she ended up getting BBC wales :whistle: :rotfl:

abbas5001

Lol thanks that made me laugh!

moonrakerz

abbas5001 wrote: »

My dad asked the previous owner whether everything was ok with TV and everything and she said it was fine (damn her!).

Threaten the previous owner with legal action to get her to pay for whatever needs to be done to get a decent TV service - she lied !

ckerrd

Was the "Sky" guy actually one of their installers?

When I first tried to get Sky their man came along and said there was no way I could get it. Phoned a local company who happily installed it for me. No problem at all, guy showed me how strong the signal was in the back garden. The Sky bloke didn't even get his meter out, just said it wouldn't work.

Have you checked that the transmitter you are pointing at actually transmits digital signals? I can see two from my house, the local one does not carry DTT so a freeview box shows nothing on that. The further away one gives terrible analogues signals but more than acceptable digital ones.

May be worth trying someone else.

jmc160

however the said it might be possible if we placed the dish at a particular position

By the sound of it, this guy either wasn't an istallation engineer or wasn't a very good one! With satellite TV, positioning of the dish is critical. The satellite it communicates with is thousands of miles away, so an inch to the left here on Earth will mean miles to the left up there. Next time you're out & about, look at all the satellite dishes on one road. They should all be facing the same direction.

Can you not get cable in your area?

moonrakerz

jmc160 wrote: »

By the sound of it, this guy either wasn't an istallation engineer or wasn't a very good one! With satellite TV, positioning of the dish is critical. The satellite it communicates with is thousands of miles away, so an inch to the left here on Earth will mean miles to the left up there. Next time you're out & about, look at all the satellite dishes on one road. They should all be facing the same direction.

Can you not get cable in your area?

I think what the man was referring to here is the vertical angle at which the signal arrives at the dish; this is usually a lot steeper than the direction in which the dish is pointing would suggest. Your dish might appear to be pointing at the trees but the signal would be coming from higher up.
Sky dishes are actually very easy to set up.

abbas5001

Hi,

The Sky guy was just from a local company, and i think he did mean the vertical angle at which the signal is transmitted to the dish. I'm going to try and find out what other transmitters are visible from my house - but i think Sky will be unlikely because all the houses next to us don't seem to have sky but the houses in the next street do, so i think they are lucky enough to just miss the trees.

longforgotten

How about asking your neighbours then ,if they have a good reception without Sky, or whatever. Could be a nice way of saying hello and introducing yourself too.

ellybelly89

robowen wrote: »

She was unlucky because she ended up getting BBC wales :whistle: :rotfl:

whats wrong with bbc wales?! lol

Moneymaker

Locate the dish further back from the trees. Sometimes that means you have to put the dish on a pole on the other side of the house, looking up the roof.