New tv aerial

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Hi all

Need to mount a new aerial to serve 3 tv points and was thinking of the new dome type ones as it’s less intrusive. Any thoughts on these and also what’s the best way to split feed to 3 points, possibly more at a later point without signal loss

Many thanks
 
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I'll answer the splitting question first because that's pretty straightforward. The answer is a Passive Splitter. Screwfix sells the Labgear range of passive two-way and 4-way splitters. Some have an outdoor housing (blue cover), others are bare metal. They're designed for indoor use.

The TV aerial signal has two parts to it: There's the signal strength (power), and the quality which is a measure of how free from noise it is. Of the two, quality is by far the most important. Adding power is easy. Any amplified splitter or booster will do that. But there is no such booster that will improve quality. The best any of us can hope for is to not lose too much quality when we pass the signal through some or other device. Aplified splitters reduce the quality. Passive splitters maintain it, but they lose a little strength.

For best results, use a passive splitter as close to the receiving TVs as possible. This is the opposite of what happens with a powered splitter. They're used as close to the aerial as possible.


Now to the trickier question of that dome aerial. I have a problem with it; well, actually several, but I'll deal with the big stuff first.

There's no specification; and I don't just mean that the retailers forgot to add the detail, it's the manufacturer's web site too. There's no detail other than the basic frequency range it picks up. That's about as useful as going to buy a car where the brochure tells you nothing more than it can be driven on motorways. Any aerial worth a damn has a comprehensive specification that lists things such as gain (before amplification is added), what the aerial is like at rejecting unwanted signals, and how directional it is. Some of those things don't apply to a circular aerial designed to pick up from a 360 degree radius, but the gain should be listed. It isn't, and they don't even list the gain of the booster amp which is usually the trick with indoor amplified aerials. For this one though, there's nothing. To me as a professional installer that's a red flag. It says that they have something to hide from anyone who knows what's what with aerials.

The second problem is the size. Aerials work by resonating in sympathy with the signals they're designed to collect. Where we want a lot of signal from an aerial before amplification, then our choices are to increase the amount of metal in the air (a bigger aerial), or to make it more directional, or to tune it to a very specific range of frequencies. The dome aerial is small, completely the opposite of directional, and wideband. What all this means is that it doesn't collect a lot of the signal that you're interested in receiving which means poor signal to noise ratio (= low quality signal); and it will pick up from other local transmitters that you may not be interested in receiving, which makes the noise problem even worse.

The signal that the aerial delivers to the amplifier is weak and full of noise. All the amp does is make that noisy poor-quality signal louder.

The third problem is a bit more technical. It's to do with something called polarisation. We have TV masts all over the country. The main ones cover most areas, but there are some places such as in dips/valleys or behind hills that are in a reception black spot. To fill in these areas we use relay transmitters. Inevitably though there's an overlap in the fringe areas where the two signals co-exist. You'd think that would be a good thing; twice the signal, right? Except it doesn't work like that. With the transmitters being at two different distances the signals interfere with each other. That's not good. To get around this problem, the signals from nearly all relay transmitters are vertically polarised. The main transmitter signals are almost always horizontally polarised. An aerial is rotated to match the transmitter. In this way, signals can overlap without too much of an issue.

Thinking about this dome aerial, there's nothing in the description that says it suits one or the other transmitter polarisations. That means that with no adjustment required, it picks up from either. The way that is done is to design the aerial with a polarisation half way between vertical and horizontal. The catch is that it greatly reduces the signal strength and quality, so on top of all the other compromises, the aerial runs with a handicap that it never fully matches your local transmitter.

All things considered - and I haven't even touched on the quality of the ancillaries - these are not great aerials.

Where you're looking for something unobtrusive, try a Log Periodic aerial. They're not a high gain aerial, but they do work well. If your home is in a very strong signal area then a min Log Periodic might be enough.


If this or any other reply was helpful to you, then do the decent thing and click the THANKS button. It appears when you hover the mouse pointer near the Quote Multi-quote buttons. This is the proper way to show your thanks for the time and help someone gave you.
 
I started a reply, but Lucid has done it far better then I could, I can see the point with a caravan so aerial can be left on caravan while being towed, but hardly worth it with a house.
 
Wow ...... hats off to you pal, that’s the best reply I’ve ever had.

I had just purchased an outdoor splitter 8way, got a feeling it maybe the wrong type

Any particular aerial you recommend? I already have one installed from when I put had purchase the house that serves 3 points, but it looks like a real old & cheap one.
 
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Before recommending an aerial we'd need to know more about the location its going into.
What is the signal like where you are? strong or weak?
How far are you away from your chosen TV transmitter mast?
Have you lots of obstructions between you and it?

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/aerials.html is a good site to get them from, however as you can see there is plenty of choice and that choice depends upon the answers to the above.
 
Before recommending an aerial we'd need to know more about the location its going into.
What is the signal like where you are? strong or weak?
How far are you away from your chosen TV transmitter mast?
Have you lots of obstructions between you and it?

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/aerials.html is a good site to get them from, however as you can see there is plenty of choice and that choice depends upon the answers to the above.
Hi

I’m about 23km away from transmitter, and the signal on the current aerial is very good. Could be mounted to the side of the house and not any obstructions I can see

Current aerial looks like a conventional one
 
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I'd echo what @mattylad said about knowing more about your location, and the recommendation for the retailer Aerials and TV. They really know their stuff, and it's important to support resellers like this by making purchases. It keeps them in business. Without them all we have is the idiots who dont have a clue and just sell any old crap.

If there is such a thing as a universal aerial, then the closest thing to it is probably the Log Periodic.

It's an aerial type with a very even gain curve, so it's good for areas where the signal is spread across a wide range of frequencies. For example, my home is served by the Winter Hill transmitter (Granada area, N.W. England). It used to be that all the signals were bunched together in the upper third of the frequency range. A Group C/D aerial, or just a typical Wideband High-Gain was a decent match. They both were most efficient at the upper 1/3rd of the frequency range, so that was a good match for where the signals were being broadcast. Recent tuning changes and the sell-off of some frequencies for 4G mean that Winter Hill now broadcasts at the lower frequencies as well as the upper ones. are at the lower end of the range. Low frequencies is where Group C/D and old-style Wideband aerials suck. If I were using one of these, I would get great signal for some channels, but marginal signal for others. Amplifying wouldn't be helpful. It would boost the already-very-strong signals as much as the weak ones. The risk then is that there would be too much signal for some channels, which then cause the same sort of freezing and pixellation problems that insufficient signal creates.

I use a Log Periodic. It is unamplified. My road is meant to be in a low strength signal area according to the Web sites that predict strength, yet I still get enough signal that I could put it through a 4-way passive splitter and still get decent results. What that proves is that the prediction sites can't be relied upon 100%. Local conditions are a big factor.

If this or any other reply was helpful to you, then do the decent thing and click the THANKS button. It appears when you hover the mouse pointer near the Quote Multi-quote buttons. This is the proper way to show your thanks for the time and help someone gave you
 
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I started a reply, but Lucid has done it far better then I could, I can see the point with a caravan so aerial can be left on caravan while being towed, but hardly worth it with a house.

I must agree wholeheartedly.
I very rarely look for advice on this particular section of the forum, but I do read many posts purely out of interest.
In my opinion Lucid is, without doubt, the best authority on such matters. That is, of course, not to say that others are not also very well informed!
 
Thanks, but I'm just a guy standing on the shoulders of giants :)
 
Hi

I’m about 23km away from transmitter, and the signal on the current aerial is very good. Could be mounted to the side of the house and not any obstructions I can see

Current aerial looks like a conventional one

Well in that case "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
 
I still need another aerial to feed additional outlets, plus current one is on the loft dormer which is hard to get it

No, you need a splitter as Lucid explained. You don't need to get at the aerial, just split the feed at a convenient point.
 

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