Recommend me a good aerial and amp / splitter please

[scotster]

I am putting TV points in 5 rooms in a complete refurb.

Recommend me a good website and model of a decent freeview and FM aerial. I assume I shoud get a wide band one?

How about this ? :

http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?cId=A331867&ts=68441&id=30515

I guess I will also need and amp/splitter. I was planning to put this in the loft. Amp or splitter?

I have no idea how strong the signal is here but I dont think is particularly hot judging on the size of the aerial adorning roofs. Is there a cheap tool I can hire or buy as I dumped my oscilloscope years ago

Also - Do I take the cable down the roof and in through the soffit board or can I sneak it under a ridge tile?

Any help welcome please.

 

[Belle427]

http://www.tvaerials.com/default.aspx

ive used televes stuff in the past and its pretty good,probably best to look at a distribution loft box of some sort

 

[scotster]

Ta.

Wolfbane reckons I need a 'Log Perdiodic' - http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?DX=L&HT=10&OS=TQ173718+

Do I? They seem quite a bit dearer and look bloody ugly!

Ta.

 

[stevesey]

Ta.

Wolfbane reckons I need a 'Log Perdiodic' - http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?DX=L&HT=10&OS=TQ173718+

Do I? They seem quite a bit dearer and look b****y ugly!

Ta.

Hm Wolfbane looks a bit pessimistc - says I need an amplified high gain aerial. When we moved in to our house there was a coil of co-ax in the loft - I quickly shoved a metal coat hanger in the end and got an excellent picture (have replaced since - but it was a number of years later). Even now aerial is in loft not external.

As mentioned in a similar thread last week - have you considered running aerial -> lounge through Freeview box and Video then split to TV and another lead back up to distribution box in the loft. That way other TVs can watch the current freeview channel, videos and even DVDs (if you plug DVD into the AV input on the video).

 

[scotster]

Hi Steve

A local installer says I won't need the Log aerial either....just a high gain digitial one.

Does that do my FM too or do I need a seperate aerial on the mast??

I am running a Media Center server in the loft with networked extenders in each room over network cabling so the return cable for freeview idea of yours is a good one...but I'm a step ahead of you on that one.

 

[Adam_151]

You'll need a separate FM aerial

Oh, and have a look at whats called a loft box... basically a distrition amp with a bit more on it, you feed in aerials (and sat if you want it) that drops down to the lounge to a special plate where it splits with a triplexer into TV, fm and sat signals, the TV signal is put through whatever devices you want, then it returns through a second cable back to the loft box and the tv signal on this one is the one thats distributed. (you can just link these across on the box if you want a normal amp)

Have a look at the blake star box, you can get remote transmitter kits for normal remotes for it (some only work with sky ones)

Use CT100 or other cable approved by the CAI, and run three lengths to your lounge (triplexed feed down, tv feed back, and second LNB feed if you ever want sky+)

As for Cat5, plenty of ports, and run each one back to a patch cabinet out the way, etc

 

[ZenStalinist]

If it says log periodic, then you are in quite a strong signal area*. No, you don't need one. Log periodics do have advantages, they're wideband (i.e. cover all of the channels in the UHF TV frequency range), and the main point is better image rejection - that means they're not as susceptible to ghosting.
A standard aerial should be fine unless there's noticeable ghosting. What transmitter do you receive your TV from? A lot of the post-digital swtichover frequencies have been cleared already, so you can find out which frequency group you need. Grouped aerials are better than the standard wideband ones in sheds as a rule, since they have more gain.

Internationally cleared channel allocations: http://www.tellyaerial.34sp.com/ta.php/rrc

The red ones are due for sell off, so you may be able to ignore them. Though in theory there may be nothing to stop a company from buying the frequency to run an extra digital TV service in your area, but I doubt that'd be the case. At least not unless its used as a method of introducing HDTV over terrestrial.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/analogue_tv/anatv_aerials.shtml - find the aerial group you'd be best off with.

You sound like you know a lot about this anyways... I probably stated the obvious a few places.

*In theory, According to Wolfbane's calculations. Which aren't always terribly accurate since they don't account for how directional the transmitters are.

And all of this 'digital' hype... an aerial is an aerial. It's designed for receivng a range of frequencies. There's no difference between 'analogue' and 'digital' as far as it's concerned. So long as it's good neough for the job.

 

[stevesey]

I am running a Media Center server in the loft with networked extenders in each room over network cabling so the return cable for freeview idea of yours is a good one...but I'm a step ahead of you on that one.

Interesting - MC software are you using, and what boxes in each room? Been toying with the idea of a Media Portal machine for a while now.

 

[bernardgreen]

The red ones are due for sell off, so you may be able to ignore them. Though in theory there may be nothing to stop a company from buying the frequency to run an extra digital TV service in your area, but I doubt that'd be the case. At least not unless its used as a method of introducing HDTV over terrestrial.

And sold off to bring another war chest of money into the governments funds.

And all of this 'digital' hype... an aerial is an aerial. It's designed for receivng a range of frequencies. There's no difference between 'analogue' and 'digital' as far as it's concerned. So long as it's good neough for the job.

But the analogue system comined with the human brain is far mroe tolerant of noise than a digital system. The white spots and faint ghosting on an analogue set do not crash the decoding system ( there isn't one) and are eliminated or tolerated by the human brain. Not the same for digital.

 

[plugwash]

actually afaict ghosting is something they took a lot of account of during design of digital TV. There is a reason they use an OFDM scheme with many narrow frequency channels and all sorts of calibration information encoded.

the big problem with digital TV is it tends to break suddenly. Up to a certain degree of interference and other problems it copes and the picture remains perfect, then you get interference that causes a bit error rate beyond what the error correction can cope with and suddenly you start to lose sync (it takes half a second or so to resync a digital TV stream) on a regular basis and the picture becomes unwatchable.

 

[scotster]

steve.

I running Microsoft Media Centre at the moment on a PC with two free view tuners in.

I have two of these. One in the loft and one in the living room. Basically serving upstairs and downstairs.

I also have an Xbox 360 used as an extender.

It basically gives you all the MC functionality and works off the MC downstairs over cat5.

Everything is cat 5d together anyway.

I am planning to get a NAS later.

All you ever wanted to know is at www.thegreenbutton.com

 

[scotster]

Thanks for everyones help on this.

I bought a log periodic, six way passive splitter and DAB dipole.

Paid the local 'bloke with a ladder' £40 to rig it.

Works perfectly. Currently feeding 4 TV's and all the signals are strong.

Saved myself £100.

Ta.

 

[securespark]

So you can take us out for a beer, then?

 

[RF Lighting]

So you can take us out for a beer, then?

Speaking of Beer owed for favours........