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Anyone in the same boat regarding aerials?
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Hello all, I'm not great at embracing new technology... but there's two tvs in the house and I decided to take the plunge and get a digital set-top box for the tv in the spare room. It's an old decrepit tiny tv but it's given loyal service and I wouldn't like to consign it to the scrapheap. It's not connected to the main roof-top aerial, there's just a little mobile aerial that connects in the rear... the reception isn't perfect (for ages it wouldn't pick up even channel 5) but it's okay for watching when there's a disagreement over family viewing in the living room.
Anyway, I tried setting up the digital box, but it couldn't pick up any channels and told me to check the antenna. I tried the box on the main tv and it works perfectly. I'm guessing that I need to get another roof-top aerial if I want digital in the spare room? A new digital tv wouldn't pick anything up either, I presume? I'm in a remote-ish area of northern Ireland, so I don't suppose there's any alternative? Any info would be much appreciated... I'm a bit clueless about this stuff.
Anyway, I tried setting up the digital box, but it couldn't pick up any channels and told me to check the antenna. I tried the box on the main tv and it works perfectly. I'm guessing that I need to get another roof-top aerial if I want digital in the spare room? A new digital tv wouldn't pick anything up either, I presume? I'm in a remote-ish area of northern Ireland, so I don't suppose there's any alternative? Any info would be much appreciated... I'm a bit clueless about this stuff.
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would I need a cable running from the living room to the spare? It's a long way... would have to go through a few other rooms, including kitchen, to get there. Doable or more hassle than it's worth?
So to clarify, thats one outdoor aerial, with a multi-way booster box with wires going to each room as required.
No point in having multiple aerials, and indoor "set top" aerials only work where Freeview signals are very, very strong indeed - which is not very many places at the moment.
Dave
Make sure you get one with an IR repeater, so that you can use the STB's remote to change channels, etc, without having to walk back into the living room.
If you're getting a decent sigal from the aerial then fair chance you'll be able to just daisy-chain the boxes. I.e. plug the aerial into one and then connect the RF output of that to the aerial socket of the next. You can try this out now with the current kit you have to see if it works.
Some STBs won't pass through RF, or do so at reduced strength, when the box is switched off (power off vs standby) and if that's a problem for you then you'll need a splitter so you can feed the aerial to each box separately. You can get these for 50p from local poundsavers and the like.
If you can get everything fine with one of the STBs but things flake out when two are connected, then you'll most probably be fine by adding a booster, something like this. Get either a 1-way one and daisy-chain/split, or get a 2-way one.
Just be sure that you know with the AV sender idea, both tv's will have to look at the same digital channel. If you want different digital channels on at each location at the same time, you need to follow the earlier suggestions
Dave
No, the STB s/he's "sending", the "spare room" one, won't be connected to any TV directly, just the sender. The sender is just a way of having the STB in one room, next to the aerial plate, and the TV in another without having to rewire the house.
Just to make sure I'm getting this right - the wireless AV sender wouldn't allow for independent viewing in both rooms if just using the one set-top box in the living room, right? I'd need to connect it to another set-top box in the living room, a set-top box connected to the main aerial, using the multi-way booster box to effectively split the aerial in two? So I'd need the booster box and the wireless AV sender and receiver to avoid the need for wires running through the rooms? Hold on... perhaps I just need a cable to connect the two set-top boxes together - can one kind of leech the aerial from another?
Crikey... I'm hopeless. You all think it would be a waste to just get another roof-top aerial for the spare room?
by the way... not much loft space, at least, I've never been up there myself, the plumber was in there once, but not sure I could get up there on my own without risking disaster! And the mains aerial signal seems to give a great reception in the living room, no problems with that so far.
Having just one STB with (or indeed without) an AV sender wouldn't allow independent digital viewing on the two TVs. You would be able to watch a digital channel on the spare room TV while independently watching whatever you can watch now (presumably the analogue five channels) on the living room TV.
If you want to watch two different digital channels at the same time, you need two STBs (or digital TVs, PVRs, etc)
The wireless AV setup, yes. The booster box maybe.
Maybe. It depends entirely on how much signal you are getting from your existing aerial. I run an STB, a PVR, a VCR, and two TVs off of a single (passive) bookshelf indoor aerial (no boosters), but then I am only a couple of miles from the transmitter.
But wait. You said you'd already tried the box on your main TV and it worked. So, with it connected up can you still watch the analogue channels ok on the main TV? If so, then you know it already works! Now what you'd do is disconnect the SCART from the STB to the TV and plug an AV sender into the STB instead, while leaving the aerial connected to the TV through the STB.
That'll get you exactly what you wanted in your original question; the ability to watch whatever you can watch now on your main TV while watching a (different) digital channel in the spare room.
If you've now decided that having digital on both TVs is a good idea, then the first thing to try is daily-chaining the two STBs, as you'll already have everything you need to do so.
Aerial
STB1
STB2
Main TV
If that doesn't work I'd suggest the next thing to try would be a splitter, as it's only 50p wasted if it doesn't work! If it doesn't then, yes, you need a booster.
Not necessarily, it is one of several options. You can go the AV sender route, or you can get someone in and fit a distribution amplifier to the existing aerial, or you can get them to put up another aerial (if you don't mind your house looking like an aerial-bush). The advantage of the AV sender is that there's no cables and no "surgery" needed to the house, and if you later decide to move the TV to another room, you can just pick it up and move it!
Maybe this one as amazon are always so reliable: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philex-Superwand-Wireless-System-SCART/dp/B0009D5VRU/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1195969261&sr=8-1
I'll need to check the set-up again, bit unsure of the aerial in relation the vcr and dvd players, but I will let you know how it goes.
Many thanks again for sharing your expertise!
(E.g. If you have a wireless broadband setup in the house you might find the two interfere with each other.)
Re aerial and VCR/DVD, just put the STB "between" (aerial connection-wise) the aerial and whatever it connects into currently.
There is indeed a wireless broadband set-up in operation. As luck would have it (or not) the transmitter is only a short distance from the main tv. I was hoping they'd operate along different lines, but maybe that's a bit optimistic? I have this unpleasant vision of multiple wireless waves zinging around the house microwaving brains like fried eggs...
There's a mobile phone mast just up the road, too. I guess we're doomed!
I bought one from Aldi, £20 made in Germany with the four channels on it, I might add all av senders & wi fi broadband senders have the same 4 channels choice.When I say choice of 4 channels,its a EU ruling,so no license needed,just find the one that is best,thats what I did,as the netgear was using one of the channekls.
Mine works perfect, its a Tevion, and Aldi give a three year warranty
Hope this helps, PS the Tevion comes with,£30 worth of leads, a real bargain for a quality tool.
Bob
The ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) standard gives 13 channels, and certainly all of my wireless cards/sticks and router offer ch 1 - 13.
£20 is a steal! Good to have a recommendation too...
The tevion as 4 channels as does my netgear from aol, nice to know of the magical 13.
However the Tevion works brilliant.the half dozen leads and scart adapters are German and would cost over £30 alone at maplins for inferior quality, at £20 I agree a steal.
Bob, thanks for the info
Cheers
It was on the Aldi site two weeks ago, the model number is
81883, Web support is
www.medion.co.uk
They are the suppliers it would seem, I am sure they have access to more. Or will sell you one.
Also try phoning the local Aldi to see if they have any left,but model number Tevion 81883 is the one to go for cost me £22/98 with a three year gurantee,We have two Aldis in Wrexham,I bought mine from a big shopping park
called Plas Coch(Red Hall) in Wrexham who had about 200 stacked up, ill see if they have any left today.
Hope this helps.
Bob
http://www.billigdrucker.de/news-seite-89.html
Sorry its in German. But it looks like the same firm as British Medion, same style of web page.
Bob
Bob Wrexham County
Well, twinglebells, looks like you've got a good (and cheap!) recommendation there. Just a matter of dropping into your nearest Aldi (their website has a store locator, www.aldi.co.uk)
There's no doubt that for a basic AV sender it's a steal for the price, but it does have some curious quirks and disappointing features and glitches.
Most disappointing is that if you connect two devices to the sender (an STB and a DVD/HDD recorder in my case) you get a small but noticable amount of crosstalk. This manifests itself as faint ghosty "clouds" drifting across the image, and faint distorted scratchy sound from the other source. The video crosstalk is only noticable on some backgrounds, and the audio crosstalk only when it's quiet on the source you're watching and noisy on the other, and although both are faint they are quite annoying at times.
That aside, there are some design limitations that some people won't care about but will make it a no-buy for others.
First, it's composite video only. The four leads provided have DIN plugs for the sender/receiver connections. Two of these have SCART plugs on the other end, with only a very few pins connected, the other two have RCA plugs (CINCH/AV, stereo + composite), along with RCA-SCART adaptors. So, no RGB, and no 4:3/16:9 switching.
Further, the recommended way of connecting up the sender side is to plug both sources and the TV into the sender. This means:
- you can't use RGB from your under-the-TV kit to the main TV
- you lose widescreen switching
- if you want to change between source A and source B on your main TV you have to flip the switch on the back of the sender
- if you switch off/put into standby the sender, you can't watch anything
Re the last point, the sender & receiver communicate their power status to each other, meaning that if you turn off the receiver in the bedroom, the sender goes into standby and your living room TV goes blank!You can avoid all of these problems by getting a SCART splitter for each source, so the sender isn't "between" the source and TV, but even at £2.50 each from the local cheapo shop, with two sources that's added a fiver onto the cost, as well as the extra clutter. (And there's still the crosstalk problem...)
Good points: the sending-receiving works fine, at least in my flat, the IR repeater works well, and the boxes are small and unobtrusive, and look ok. Oh, and the receiver has an RF modulator, so it's good for sending to older TVs without a SCART socket.
So, if you just want to send only one source, don't care about sending RGB and widescreen switching to the remote TV, and are willing to get a SCART splitter, then this AV sender-receiver is a steal, otherwise give it a miss.