Digital TV coming soon.

Free to air Digital TV is coming to Suffolk in March,so that means the old analog signal will be switched off.
Well ,we have Virgin media via cable for our main wide screen TV,they provide an excellent all singing all dancing service,but that is only to one tv.
We have three other tv's that have to be provided for,do we buy freeview boxes?do we need a freeview ariel?what about a signal sender that sends the signal from one room to another ....Do they realy work?Do we buy new freeviw ready tv's .
Or do we pay virgin media for more digi boxes to receive their service ,I think that IS a no no.
So lots of decisions to make in the next few months.
I would be interested to know other members ideas ,successes and failures or any other suggestions for a smooth changeover.
I believe parts of Wales have already changed over.
Thanks in advance.

 

Hi Roders

We have rubbish reception here in Medway. We too have Virgin cable for the main tv, but we also have Freeview for the other televisions (blimey, I've just counted and there are four others in a tiny house. Shocking). We have installed a very hefty aerial and something I'm told is called a 'distribution amplifier' up in the loft to get good reception with Freeview; we used to get terrible problems during bad weather! You'd be about to find out whodunnit ... and the picture would freeze. However, if you're in an area with good reception, you should be able to use Freeview even with a portable aerial.

Personally I wouldn't pay out for more digi boxes. There's quite enough rubbish to watch on Freeview.

 

We've had freeview here for years. You need a freeview box for each telly, they are only about £20 now. If you split the signal from one box then the people in the other rooms will have to watch whatever you are watching. It can all be run off one ariel feed though, with splitters to each room.

If the tellys have got a scart socket then they will work with a freeview box.

The other option is freesat. About £170 installed. More channels + HD channels.

 

Hi Roders - I went through an exercise like this with my sister, who lives in Devon and switched over to digital last year.

The first point is that you don't need a new ariel if your present one is working OK. As I understand it an arial just picks up electromagnetic waves and doesn't know or care if they are digital or analog.

However channels are broadcast in multiplexes, which is a group of channels all transmitted on the same frequency. And TV ariels are tuned to those frequencies, so you could have two TV ariels which are tuned to different frequencies. However I suspect that if your ariel picks up the old channels, it will be OK for the new ones. I have Googled in the past and put my postcode in, and sites will tell you what transmitters you can pick up (ie direction the ariel should point - but should be the same), what multiplexes they transmit, on what frequencies and the quality of reception. In my case I am between two transmitters in a rather weak area. One, of about 4 multiplexes, is very weak and sometimes I can't get proper reception. When that happens the same group of channels all fail at the same time, but the rest are OK. But then I always have had poor reception with analogue at times - when the weather was unsuitable, ie conditions at the transmitter rather than at my house. I understand that when the anaolgue signals are turned off the digital signals will be boosted by up to a factor of 10 times the strength - so I am living with my poor reception in the hope that it will improve next year at the change over.

The other cause of poor reception is that wires and connectors may cause a loss of signal. My sister got a local TV shop to come and check the reception strength because she had some problems. They charger about £60, which was refunded from any work done by them. The chap had an instrument that measured the signal strength and you could see the signal reduce as it passed along wires and through junctions and splitters. The system was very old and complicated. However he identified one piece of wire which took the signal across a room which had a huge loss. Just the replacement of this wire boosted the signal hugely. And there was nothing wrong with the ariel. He mentioned that cheap connectors and cheap wire will produce more losses. But if the system is small and the signal strong - it may not be a problem.

If you buy a new TV, you simply buy an analogue type TV (even if its flat screen) with a build in freeview box. As the picture quality on old tube TVs is often superior to flat screen TVs I would be inclined to agree with the others and just buy a freeview box for each old TV, as they are pretty cheap.

 

You need to pick & choose when it comes to viewing. I use this site for the listings,

http://www.tvguide.co.uk/

Most freeview channels are on there before the sky listings,

You need to scroll past the sky listings for the rest of the freeview channels such as fiver, history & film 4.

When it comes to events like glastonbury, tennis & chelsea flower show then these are usually covered on the 300/301 channels.

We find these brilliant. To access the special events just press the red button whilst on any bbc channel & follow the menu.

 

I'm finding this all very interesting as I still find, after dark mostly, that on freeview the picture breaks up and the sound makes all kinds of strange squeaks and loud clicks.
So I switch it off and go back to analogue.

Freeview digital has a long way to go before I will say they have it perfected.
Lots of channels that mostly dont work, up to now, has been my experience.

 

Hi Pete. It sounds like you have the same problem with reception which we had until my husband, who actually understands this stuff, put some kind of megablaster in the loft (I'm told I should refer to this as a 'distribution amplifier'). Now, it's great. We can actually watch tv during bad weather without the squeaks and clicks :D.

 

Hi Pete,

Also, if you've still got analogue, then your digital signal is probably only operating at half power. If they broadcast it at full strength it would interfere with the analogue.

It'll be full strength on the day of the switch over.

BTW when I was setting up here, I was getting interference on every channel. I checked everthing & then found the airiel had been put together wrong in the factory. The plate on the back was 90 degrees to the rest of it. Re made it & now got perfect reception.

 

Thankyou Clare and ziggy.

Yep its the 21st century and they still cant get the TV to work properly without it costing extra money and hassle.
Can anyone explain why we aren't all digital by now anyway, we seem to have had this half strength signal nonsense for years, analogue is still the best picture here at the moment.

They get everyone paying out money for Amplifiers that will perhaps not be needed once they turn the signal full on.

 

To right Pete, i've got a couple that i've been trying to car boot. Trouble is West bay has switched over now so no one needs em.