Nezz10

Am I right in thinking that they use the same cable or is it different stuff for the uprated freeview aerials?

My freeview reception is a crap and can hardly pick up anything but have been told that I need a better aerial. If I do get one I would want it to hook up to the current wiring so I didnt have to redo it all.

OllyK

You can hook it to the same co-ax cable, but if you can, you'd be better upgrading to a higher quality co-ax similar to that used for Cable / Satellite, bit like running your performance car on Tesco's basic 4 star rather than Optimax . The end connectors may be different by default, often "F" type - the screw in ones, but you can swap them over or get convertors.

Reality

Wiring should be fine.

Just the aerial needs replacing by the sounds of things.

OllyK Sounds like a dodgy Sky Installer - Oh yes mate - you'll need to re-wire the whole house to get optimum reception .

Aerial = Big Improvement
re-wire = one pixel improvement.

imo

OllyK

A lot depends on the quality of what is there and how long a run it is, sure, it will work with existing coax, but if you can upgrade it, it's worth considering doing it. The coax isn't pricey, I got 100m for £30 or so off the guy that fitted my areil & sky dish so I could run it to all the rooms in the house from the distribution box in the roof.

Reality

Fairy Nuff .

Not sure the improvements will be comparable to the step up from Tesco's finest to Optimax though .

If it's gonna cost £30 then it might be worth considering - If someone else is gonna do it and charge £100 it looks about the same VFM as a pikey fixing your roof

OllyK

I probably saw the big difference due to the old cable we had being a pile of poo, badly kinked in places and the insulation damaged. I dunno, just passing on what the TV guy said. He was a small independant, nice guy and pretty cheap, and I didn't get the impression he was bull$hitting about the cable. I guess it's a bit like some Hi-fi nuts saying they can tell the difference between 79 and 82 strand copper wire for speakers

andy97

iTrader: (1)

If you live in a poor reception area, then upgrading the coax cable to a twin screened foil type will help, especially on long runs(attenuation of signal). A good quality wide band aerial will allow better pickup of digital programmes and less dropout of signal, due to them being transmitted across a wider uhf spectrum, but if you have a very good reception area then you can generally use a bog standard cheap aerial and cable setup.

nb raising the aerial up high as possible will help a great deal, especially if you have buildings, trees or shadow from hillsides in the way. Always use t-k brackets mounted into the wall, large chimney and large diameter poles when going beyond normal pole length.