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Reception and Indoor Aerials


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Old 12-12-2016, 14:46
anon_private
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I have a cheap and basic indoor aerial connected to the TV for Freeview reception (main transmitter about 5 miles away).
There is one multiplex that is not being received.

Am I right in thinking that I would be unlikely to receive this multiplex if I bought a more expensive indoor antenna, because, at the end of the day, they tend to perform much of a muchness.

Thank you
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Old 12-12-2016, 14:58
chrisjr
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Which transmitter and which mux? Also helps if you tell us what aerial you currently have and even the make and model of TV might be useful to know.

If you are missing the Freeview HD mux and your TV is not Freeview HD compatible changing the aerial will not alter that, changing the TV for a Freeview HD one however would.

Have you tried moving the aerial around? One of the problems with indoor aerials is that there can be all sorts of reflections affecting reception and finding the sweet spot where all the muxes are received equally well can be a real pain.

Those horrid loop types are in my experience the worst ones you could use. The types that resemble a small outdoor aerial tend to work better. Also some types have a built in mains powered amplifier. That is OK if the raw signal off the aerial is nice and clean. But no amplifier can help if the wanted signal is buried in the noise. It just amplifies the noise along with the signal so you end up with stronger noise burying the signal just as much as if it were not amplified.
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Old 13-12-2016, 16:26
spiney2
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Unlikely, yes. Perhaps worth experimenting a bit with moving it around ? Digital reception is a ''threshold'', thing (look up ''digital cliff effect''), and the answer is to lower the cliff, using an aerial with more metal bits (hence, higher gain) or putting it higher up (like, the roof). Very expensive indoor aerials are likely useless, as explained in above posts, since the ''signal to noise ratio'' is an absolute and unalterable limit to digital tv reception.
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Old 13-12-2016, 17:25
anthony david
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Having lived in bedsits many years ago I can tell you that the most important thing is a 10ft, or more, extension cable for your aerial. I never lived anywhere where the indoor aerial worked close to the TV. There is a wonderful example of the trials of using an indoor aerial in a Hancock's half hour called The Bedsitter. The final working position may be unrelated to the polarisation of the transmitter or its direction.
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Old 13-12-2016, 17:45
stud u like
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I have a cheap flat aerial. I can get french television.
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Old 13-12-2016, 21:59
Hacker Harrier
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Having lived in bedsits many years ago I can tell you that the most important thing is a 10ft, or more, extension cable for your aerial. I never lived anywhere where the indoor aerial worked close to the TV. There is a wonderful example of the trials of using an indoor aerial in a Hancock's half hour called The Bedsitter. The final working position may be unrelated to the polarisation of the transmitter or its direction.
For years I used 14 inch CRT TVs with a plug in loop type indoor aerial (as a bedroom TV). The reception was generally flaky, often hopeless with analogue or digital. This year the TV was replaced with a 24 inch LCD TV, using the same aerial the TV reception improved markedly, which really surprised me.
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