Struggling with a remote rural location TV antenna job,
job is combined with a rewire from last year and im struggling with poor reception on tv. after long overhall and only 30 digital blocky channels with several types of antennas and also pointing in full 360 degree directions, moving half inch direction and rescanning on all TV's and information logged for best performance.

As signal is however not too bad we contacted a local tv installer to see if can be improved and report came back the following:

1. Visual from ground, wrong type of antenna installed.
2. Antenna pointing wrong way.
3. TV coaxial installed is not correct type of coaxial for new digital antenna's and needs rewired.
4. Only repair, is installation of freestat dish and although cost of system not discussed the next door paid £1600 to have antenna replaced for a dish using exisitng wiring.
5. His meter is showing a signal being received from my antenna although over a short space of time will damage all the 8 tv's as it has a high pitched noise thats above hearing level that is currently badly damaging all the TV's.

The engineer also explained as location tv coverage is limited to expect around 40 digital channels at best on any freeview and slightly better by using a dish. The install we currently have is antenna, booster and distributed to 8 tv's all freeview built in and most are brand new or less than 3yr old.

Anyone explain any further on these findings? As TV installer giving our absolutely no information as apparently im just another electrician trying to learn his trade secrets and doing him out of work

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

Dougie, you have my e-mail address, so feel free to e-mail me. I'll try to help you via e-mail if you wish.

Regards

Mike

Did you notice where the "TV installer" tied up his horse? I hope his spurs didn't make a mess of your tiled floor.

Go to the wolfbane website and enter the location of the site. You'll get full details of what digital terrestrial channels are available, which aerial group to use, whether a high-gain type with/without amplifier is needed, which polarity to set, and where to point it.
Downlead should be well screened - use satellite foil & braid screened type to prevent interference pickup.

If geography dictates that Freeview reception wil not be reliable at that location, a satellite dish and Freesat receiver are a good alternative. Assuming you have a clear view of the southern sky from the likely dish location. "Slightly better using a dish" is bogus. If your properly-installed dish can see the satellite, you'll get all the channels that are there to be got.

How far from London is this site? Assuming somewhere in the British Isles £1600 would pay for my dish, mount, cable, labour and petrol!

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Alan Kay, CEng MIEE

hi all, thanks for replied,

its currently wired in standard 75ohlm tv coaxial from a wideband tv antenna on chimney to a SLX 8way TV booster and then distributed to 8 freeview TV's all wired in single bog standard tv coaxial, as this was a rewire all cables separated from 240volt apart from slightly where booster is as located at supply, but separated as best as possible

I have looked at other properties antenna's and tried to match. after talking to two neibours one only bothers with DVD's and the other is a holiday home and no time for tv especially as only decent reception is when its calm and clear day she explained.

I have looked digiataluk website for areil help and going to ditch the widebrand antenna and change to exactly the type that digi.al required. I do have one of these analoge signal meters but never used it and proberly not work with now digital ariel.

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

Hi, your wideband aerial should be fine if used with a masthead amp. We set up TV's over Dartmoor. Height is the main problem. The higher you can get the aerial the better in most cases. The amplification equipment should not cost you more than a few hundred pounds for a good set up. Failing that - spend a few hundred pounds on a sky free sat. If you have more money - invest in a decent Horizon meter like this one http://www.tradeworks.tv/acata...Terrestrial_Meter.html
It will save you hours of setup time and is easy to use.

We are pressently installing a 32 point TV/SKY/FM & UFH distribution system in a rural area and the total kit and coax's well under your £1600. Feel free to email/pm if you would like any more help. Regards, Sparkyaj

Another tv wideband antenna installed today........fixed most of problems wooohoooo. ..............however thrown up a new fault, :-( out of the 8 tv's 6 fine and 2 TV have almost full digital apart from channels 1,2,3,4,5 and first few of freeview.

All our coaxial's have been checked and cables checked and meggered for problems.

In my experience it was the higher tv channels that was week on signal strength normally but this job is other way round.

In digital strength and also quality both up there at plus 75% and sometimes up as high as late 90's%, (nearly got blown off roof was very windy).

Getting fed up, luckily picked up another days worth of work today so back in 3 weeks and i promised an answer. Wall on roof with compass, ipday on digitaluk website and pointed to every repeater or antenna within 200 miles.

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

I take it you made a note of the polarisation of the various transmitters you were pointing the antenna at. A lot of the repeaters are likely to be "vertical" rather than "horizontal" - it makes a significant difference to the reception. With a standard yagi, there are a number of short elements along the length of the antenna. These should point in the direction of the polarisation - either horizontal or vertical. Other than that, try a masthead amplifier. You need a good signal before the coax, otherwise you will be amplifying the inteference too.

Regards,

Alan.

The coverage predictors are not always accurate (our address suggests that one 30 miles away is best, but we use one just 6 miles away. However, our caravan gets the 30 mile away one better as the antenna height is lower and the nasty bungalow next door gets in the way!
Usually BBC channels are strongest - but we find in the caravan, that you need to manually tune the TV. Auto always starts at the lowest channel and if it finds the same program starts numbering at 800. This means if you get adequate reception from several transmitters, it's worth seeing what's on channel 800 upwards.
A couple of weeks ago I foolishly auto tuned the van TV for SWMBO and the reception was great. When I came back a couple of days later to bring her back, I asked how the TV was, rubbish she said. It seems at that spot in the field, another transmitter was better - but they were all up at 800+. Manual tuning sorted it and I now have a list of the common places we go, antenna direction, polarization, 1st choice frequencies and 2nd choice.
The TV also makes a difference, we had to buy a new one, and it only needs 60% signal and 35% quality will hold signal. The old one needed at least 70% quality before we had to give up and watch a video or try an analogue signal.
As you don't say which part of the country, you are trying to get TV signals in, so I can't even suggest anything, but I do know the Bakewell showground only gets a few channels, East of England showground depends if you are on the lower bit or on the higher bit, Newbury depends on which way the wind is blowing as London, Hannington and Oxford all come in varying strengths (Witney is the same). Orsett is London, Winterton showground gets Belmont or Emley moor. Gatcombe park also has a choice of about 3.
That's the problem with the antenna only being about 3 metres above the ground and being somewhere different every time you want to watch TV - but you can learn a lot about different areas.
Give a post code and I can try to suggest best options ( a lot of experience with caravan TV reception and mobile radio transmitters/coverage)

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Norman

Just a update installed masthead amp and not 100% quality and 100% strength on most tvs, but only 35 digital tv's, checked with my new tv db tester and getting arround 65db signal strength.

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

Quality is more important than strength with DTTV. A poor quality signal into an amplifier will simply provide a stronger, just-as-poor signal.
In fact, some DTTV receivers have problems with very high input signal levels. You may find their front-ends overdriven, causing distortion and thus reduced signal quality.
Does your new tester show strength alone, or can it also display Bit Error Rate (BER)? You need to minimise the BER as early as possible in the distribution chain, once the quality has dropped no amount of amplification can restore it.
Causes of poor BER; Poor reception area/aerial in poor location. Local impulse interference affecting poorly-screened aerial cable. Co-channel interference from nearby mobile phone base-station (google for "LTE problems after the digital switchover"). Or maybe your new masthead amplfier is being overdriven*, adding its own distortion?
*either by wanted or interfering signals.
You really need to use a good quality signal analyser to be sure what's causing your problems.

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Alan Kay, CEng MIEE

If you are unable to get all channels on all TVs then check the region or country the TV is set for.
I installed a 32 output unit in a house and a number of the sets had to be changed away from 'Austria'. Once they were set to the uk all the channels were available.

sounds to me on wideband that you have picked up two separate outputs. ie - you have two t/x's from different areas directing digital. the 6 bands that you see might actually be the higher 3 from each t/x. rather than 6 bands from one.

have seen this done a couple of times on sites where combiner split systems have been installed. Customers got the general idea correct, but after all the hard work wtill only had half of the test bands.

Certainly check for signal quality rather than strength. you could almost get away with 20% signal but wuld need at least 40DB of quality to receive all 6 bands. I usually aim for around 50DB and then use an antenuator to wind it down at the incoming side of the dist switch/amp.

Keep us posted with your findings - what new meter do you have? Is it a Horizon one?

Yes I agree with that.
I live in an area on the fringe of 3 main transmitters.
The aerial needs to be highly directional to avoid the not wanted signals being received too.
Fortunately the unwanted signals that I do receive (even though I have a highly directional aerial) are on a different MUX channel so don't interfere with the ones I want.
If they were I'd be in trouble.

Installed the masterhead amplifier, and got a good 35 channels, however slightest litttle fog and looses every chancel and services,

This a compleate nightmare, going to increase the masthead amplifier variable gain, as was 100% quality and 100% strength but with fog goes to 0% quality and 0% strength.

Set up hjave at moment is 1 antena on roof with masthead amp. To a 8way booster distributed to 8 wall DC pass points. 5 wall mounted flat screen tvs. Think need to upgrade to freesat, however full current system wied in single coaxial, what digital sytems are avaiable to me without running new cables??

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

Try satcure

Anyone used cat5e for tv? As I got a cat5e mounted at each tv as well as phone point as was future proofing.

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Dougie
Power Plus Electrical.co.uk

My mission is to live as long as possible......so far so good!

Try rapid electronics
Aerial info

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/best_aerial.htm

Hey Dougie, i have just installed a Triax system which provides HDMI over LAN on cat 5/6

Its simple enough to wire and install, but system will set you back in excess of £14/15K :-)

I did see in Australia (back in 2007) that HP were introducing a system like our cable here on a cat5 and it had about 200 ch's free to view on it. Ill see if i can find some info on it