I'm in the crystal Palace area, and we're due to be switched to digital in April. So we have to retune twice during the month.

I'm on virginmedia at the moment, but am highly likely to switch to BT Vision+ in the next month.

If I do that, I'll have a connection to my HD Freeview TV via RF out, RF loop or Antenna Out, or by using an aerial splitter.

In either event, I'll need to switch between TV and HMDI depending on which I want to use.

What I need to know is: do I need to retune twice each time? In other words, do I retune on TV, and then again on HDMI? The TV has one tuner, and the vision box 2.

Incidentally, do RF out, RF loop, antenna out and aerial out amount to the same thing?

Anything that has a Freeview tuner in it will need to be retuned. So the Virgin box won't need anything doing to it as it doesn't receive Freeview. The BT Vision box if you do get it will need retuning as that does have a Freeview tuner. (well two but they retune together so only one operation needed). And obviously if the TV is also Freeview it will need retuning as well.

As you say RF, antenna and aerial are interchangeable when it comes to describing the socket on the back of the box. Loop means there are input and output sockets that are connected together.

Thanks for the reply.

So, assuming I have the BT box, I just set the TV input to "TV", retune, then set it to "HDMI" and retune again? Would that be from a menu on the box?

And do I take it that the difference on the aerial output is that:

RF Out or Antenna Out: signal from 'Aerial In' to the box's tuners then to the output socket.

RF Loop : signal direct to output socket, with a 'spur' to the tuners.

You do the retunes from menus on the device you are retuning. So you use the TV menu to retune the TV and the Vision box menu to retune that.

Which order you do it in is completely irrelevant, they are not in any way dependent on each other. You only need a TV to retune the Vision box so that you can see the menus and other on screen displays. You could use a monitor with no tuner in it at all for that if you so desired.


Not necessarily. All RF OUT or whatever actually means is that the device has an output socket. It says nothing about how that socket is wired.

Loop does explicitly define that the box has an RF/Aerial Input that is fed through to the RF/Aerial Out.

If there is an RF Input then it's signal is split between the RF Out socket and the tuner(s) in the device. The signal on the RF Out does not go via the box's tuners at all.

Sometimes passive splitting is used but a lot of kit these days use amplifiers to split. Which can be a problem as some devices, such as my Humax 9150, have a low power standby mode that switches off the splitter amplifier. So no signal gets from the RF In to the RF Out! Unless you leave it switched on all the time or disable the low power standby mode. Or do as I do and split the aerial feed and run TV and Humax separately.

Thanks chris, great summary. I can understand these things when they're put in simple terms like that. I won't remember them, but I understand them for now.