Digital Aerial advice.

stebiz

I have a normal aerial at present with 2 points in the house working fine. I need an extra point and have asked a guy out of the yellow pages to install anoher point and have a new aerial. He is coming tomorrow. Will the other 2 aerial points still work as they do now or do you have to renew cabling. Because at the moment he is only charging £35 for a new point and £35 for a new aerial but if he asks to renew the other two that would be another £70. Also will my tv (one is quite old) work with digital (I only want the 4/5 channels) or will it need freeview. I have cable as well so it is only as a spare.
Cheers
Stebiz

Little_John

He should either leave what you have in place and attach a 2nd aerial or connect your exsting points to the new aerial. most aerials will work with digital anyway so i would bother about it, I would proberbly just get an extra point of the existing one.

I know the reply was late so let us know what happened

economiser

Whether your existing aerial will work with digital depends on the where you are and the strength of the signal. There is a good chance it will work OK. Your old set will not work with digital. You will need a freeview box.

moonrakerz

The stupid thing about digital is that an aerial which is not adequate now, may well be adequate when the switch over takes place. This is because all the digital transmitters are on reduced power and will not go to full power until the analogue transmitters are switched off.
So lots of people are getting new aerials now when they won't actually need them. BUT there is no way of proving this as the digital and analogue transmitters will never be on full power at the same time !

economiser

I have been having problems with Crystal Palace myself lately and from threads on digitalspy I note I am not alone.

I posted my problem on another thread and a moneysaver suggested first upgrading the "fly leads" (the leads connecting the set to the socket and to other equipment you may have). This has made a dramatic improvement to the strength and quality of my signal. The next step would have been to renew the cable from the loft to the wall socket, then the aerial itself and finally moving it to outside if necessary.

It is all a bit frustrating as moonrakerz says when we know that in due course this will not be necessary.

klint

economiser wrote: »

I have been having problems with Crystal Palace myself lately and from threads on digitalspy I note I am not alone.

Can you give me some links to these threads? I couldn't find them. I too have been having trouble recently. I have not changed anything with regards to my reception set up, yet the BBC signals (both analog & digital) from Crystal Palace have suddenly become much weaker. This happened a few weeks ago. The ITV and CH4 signals have both remained good. (The Channel 5 signal seems to have improved but I think is from a different transmitter so not relevant to this discussion.)

Any ideas what's happened? Has the BBC reduced its power recently?

economiser

I started a thread on the "Techie" board "Digital TV signal strength". Among the replies was one from Moneymaker listing the following and I went from there. The suggestion about the "fly leads" has improved things enormously. My problem was with ITV, CH4 and CH5. BBC was fine.

Moneymakers reply:

Well, I searched Google for crystal palace itv reception problems and it came up with a discussion here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=584673

Frankly, the first thing I'd do is replace your "fly leads" with good quality fully screened type. These are often a cause of problems.

Some tips here: http://sam-radford.me.uk/freeview.htm