whilst i was up in the loft getting the xmas decorations down i noticed how small the tv aerial is and how thin the coax wire is, so im thinking of getting one of those big digital aerials and some new cable and just run a new length down to the aerial socket. is there like a daddy of coax cable to give me the best possible picture?
i notice that most coax is a 75ohm type would i not be better off with a lower resistance cable or does lower resistance not give better signal strength?

75 Ohm... just make sure its 'double screened'.... and get decent connectors ,too :)

Chop a sample..the more shielding, the better, a nice braid with lots of woven wire strands and a thick layer of foil underneath, solid inner sheathing and a thick single strand conductor.

This: http://www.maplin.co.uk/images/300/n61ar.jpg

Not this : http://www.megalithia.com/elect/cable/txcoax_s.jpg

Handy info: DTT cable - why WF100/CT100 is better than low-loss TV coax for digital signals (http://www.megalithia.com/elect/cable/index.html)

a lot of handy info there sharkman i had looked at the maplins site and was thinking of the ft125 type but just wanted some more advice before i went ahead with it.

By the stuff from CPC as it will be cheaper than Maplin, we get it for 9p a metre but then again we do buy 1000 metres at a go:)

Whilst 125 might be theoretically better, it's usually less flexible and therefore harder to work with. As with all co-ax If you can't bend it in the radius you need to it will kink (which is a bad thing), so you may be better off sticking with 100.....

I used the PF100 (http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/sea/searchresults.jsp;jsessionid=IWWOMIROQPVOSCSTHZPCF FQ?_dyncharset=UTF-8&howMany=15&searchText=pf100) stuff from Screwfix.