WHAT TO USE - INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL TV AERIAL?

geek84

Good Morning Folks

I hope you're all well 

I wanted a bit of advice. I have a TV point in the wall of my living room and wish to have another TV point in the dining room, so that when I eventually get a second TV I can use the external tv aerial. What's the best way of doing this? Or do you think I should just buy an internal aerial for my 2nd tv?

Thanks

Farway

If you can get one cheap enough I'd try internal first and see if it works OK, no point making work if you don't have to

[Deleted User]

What about an Amazon Fire stick or any if the many low cost alternatives? That of course depends on the speed of your broadband, and what you want to watch. If you streaming works for you, then no aerial needed. But if you just want an aerial, I'd always go external. Partly because surely you don't want to clutter the area more than necessary, but mostly because indoor aerials are generally a bit rubbish, and you'll probably find yourself first forking out for a booster, then getting a proper aerial put up anyway. 

matelodave

If an internal aerial works then that's fine, but frequently they dont.

They are usually downstairs which means that the signal gets obstructed by not only all your walls but most of your neighbours walls as well, whereas an external aerial mouted higher up tends to have a clearer line of sight to the transmitter and so gets a stronger signal.
Its a case of trying it out but you could end up forking out for an internal aerial that doesn't work and then and external one that does. 

If your existing aerial is OK then there's always the option of installing a distribution amplifier and sharing the signal between the two rooms. A basic non amplified splitter seldom works satisfactorily unless you've got a really good strong signal as it will halve the signal strength to each TV point.

Rodders53

The UK TV transmitter network is designed around the use of external, directional TV aerials, 10 metres above the ground.
So external is the best answer.

But LOCATION matters.  Some can use room aka set top aerials (especially upstairs).  

https://www.aerialsandtv.com/knowledge/aerials/indoor-set-top-aerials and other pages on that site is worth reading.

tghe-retford

I do get annoyed by the assumption made on forums and videos reviewing digital TV USB sticks that you can't receive digital signals from an indoor antenna and you have to use an external one, at which point the argument will be to just use the Internet, it's the future. It is a myth. You can receive a signal for digital TV indoors. Antennas don't care about how the signal is encoded - analogue or digital, they just care about picking up the signal.

Just for a laugh, I did an experiment. Two pieces of baking foil cut to half the wavelength of the weakest HD multiplex to form a dipole (and people joke about cheap aerials from high street stores being so weak that they must be made from baking foil) and it worked. I was picking up all the multiplexes including the two weaker HD multiplexes (at the time). And I don't live metres from the transmitter, I am 50km away as the crow flies and you need a substantial aerial on the roof to pick up TV here (and until recently, DAB too).

The reason why my antenna worked is because I made sure it was oriented horizontally. Television signals from high powered main transmitters are horizontally polarised and your antenna needs to be set-up to match. What everyone seems to do is put the antenna they get on a table in a vertical polarisation (what small power TV relays and DAB use) and then wonder why they can't get a picture and subsequently complain that the antenna is junk and that the digital TV network is not fit for purpose without an external antenna. Positioning helps as well, you need to move your antenna around and have a signal meter handy (the DVB driver on Android I use has a manual signal meter because like DAB, you won't be able to just move around and find the best signal by seeing the screen without a meter). And upstairs works better than downstairs because when it comes to television and radio reception, height is might.

I personally have a old Labgear wideband indoor antenna that was discontinued a couple of decades ago and it works better than the current crop of indoor aerials that I have purchased since. I've even bought a cheap rabbit ear telescopic antenna for less than £2 from a discount store. Again, all multiplexes including the weakest ones because they were horizontally oriented. Yes, the Labgear one works better but the cheap one still works.

Of course, where possible, an external antenna will beat an internal one in performance but it is not the impossible feat that people think it is.

Chino

tghe-retford said:

I am 50km away as the crow flies

Odd for someone in this country to refer to distances in kilometres instead of miles.

Rodders53

tghe-retford said:Two pieces of baking foil cut to half the wavelength of the weakest HD multiplex to form a dipole (and people joke about cheap aerials from high street stores being so weak that they must be made from baking foil) and it worked. I was picking up all the multiplexes including the two weaker HD multiplexes (at the time). And I don't live metres from the transmitter, I am 50km away as the crow flies and you need a substantial aerial on the roof to pick up TV here (and until recently, DAB too).

Bit contradictory in the same post:  
1)  Bacofoil dipole in a room  picks up TV just fine.
2) " and you need a substantial aerial on the roof to pick up TV here"

So which is it? 

I'd also appreciate a very nearby postcode of this location 50km from any transmitter that works so well on a simple dipole in order to put it into something like http://www.wolfbane.net/cgi-bin/tvd.exe? to estimate the signal levels received there.  I can use a dipole in my bedrooms 17km from Sandy Heath but I think 50km is stretching it a bit.

Reliable reception from a room aerial at ground level is almost invariably an issue; but they can work OK in some relatively fortunate locations.