Digital TV Aerial or not?

Question

I've tried installing a freeview box at a friends house as her terrestrial signal is quite fuzzy. The thing is she can get a few channels perfectly but the others tend to freeze up and are jagged, then it will go okay for a few seconds, also channel 5 is not on the freeview box so she has to revert to terrestrial to watch it and that is almost perfect. She obviously lives in a poor signal strength area so I just wondered if a digital aerial would make a difference and what the cost would likely be if she were to need one put up?

Answer 1

You could get a signal booster box for the freeview box that you plug in. It boosts the signal strength, and technically should pick up more channels and improve the signal strength. You could also try and digital aerial and see if this helps as well. I have got a booster box for the freeview card I have in my computer, and it works wonders. They are cheap as well. I think I got mine for £5 from Argos.

Good luck..

Answer 2

get sky - they'll even send people to fix it up for you.

www.sky.com

Answer 3

I've cut and pasted most of this from one of my other answers...

Digital TV aerials are a con - there is no such thing as a digital aerial. Radio frequencies have nothing to do with digital or analogue. There is no such thing as a digital frequency, or an analogue frequency. Your aerial already receives the digital and analogue signal, as they are radio frequency signals, not because they are analogue or digital. They are unrelated.

The only difference between a so called 'digital aerial' and an 'ordinary' one is that the 'digital ones' are wide-band, which in TV aerial terminology is band W. Analogue TV transmissions are arranged so that the 4 channels (not channel 5) are near each other in frequency, so that an aerial that is 'better' at receiving those kind of frequencies can be used. These frequency bands are referred to as A, B, C/D, E, K and W.

The digital TV transmission is not necessarily on the 'same frequency band' as the analogue channels and so may need 'a different aerial letter'. So you could get OK analogue TV, but poor digital TV.

The 'idea' of a digital aerial is marketing speak to try to get uninformed people to buy overpriced aerials that they don't need.

What should help is a higher gain band W aerial, high enough up, some new good coaxial cable and having the aerial pointed at TV transmitter mast.