Right, moved into a new house, went to set up the freeview box last night and it is struggling to pick up many channels. We know the box works as it did in our old house last week. It is plugged into a roof top aerial that I am told is quite new (it certainly looks it). We have used the autotune function and have so far managed to pick up BBC4, a strange music channel and some radio stations.

Any ideas on how to get it working?

Did the previous owner use Freeview? It may be that you need to re-align the aerial.

Have you checked what signal strength your box is receiving?

Check the connectors & the face plate connections

you need a good solid connection with none of the braid touching the centre core

http://www.satcure.co.uk/tech/tvplugs.htm

Aerial pointing the right way ?
Found out where your local mast is and orientate it.
Is it a digital specific ariel ?
Longet and thinner I think.
My folks had to fit one of these to get a good signal.
Not expensive – you jst need to get up on the roof.
J.

Is it a digital specific ariel

No such thing

Are you pointing at the same transmitter since you moved. The new signal from the mendips transmitter works fine on my pvr but my old digibox can only see a couple of channels.

Right, to answer so far, I'm not sure if the last occupants used Freeview, but i know they did use the aerial to pick up terrestrial TV in one of the bedrooms.
Signal quality is good but the strength is at around about 30% i think. Nearest transmitter is (for those who know the area) about 5 miles away (Brierly Hill and I am in Stourbridge).
The cables are new and the connector seems good as far as by basic electronics know.

If i do move the aerial is it literally a case of pointing it towards the tower?

Yes point it at the tower.
Ok a high gain aerial or whatever they are called.
J.

A reply I gave on a similar thread

Although Brierly hill is a C/D transmitter & all the digi stuff pretty much falls in that band

http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=SO916856

I'll have a go at explaining why some people can only get some channels & why there seems to be a need for a 'digital' aerial

UHF bands IV & V are used for UK terrestrial TV 471MHz to 847MHz [give or take]
These bands are split into channels & given numbers 21-68

Before all this digital malarkey, when we had 5 channels – they had to try & stop adjacent transmitters interfering with each other so they grouped the channels & made sure that adjacent main transmitters used different groups & different channel number within them
Group A – Ch 21-37
Group B – Ch 35-53
Group C/D – Ch 48-68

there are others but I'm ignoring them as irrelevant

Aerials were made to tightly adhere to these groups – so if you were in a group A area you'd have a group A aerial fitted etc.

with me so far ?

OK – along comes digital & a lot of transmitters didn't have the room to fit in the digital multiplexes within it's group so they simply put some of them out of group meaning a lot of the aerials rejected the signal & created the need for a wide-band aerial in a lot of areas
What was often the result was that the aerial would pick up some of the muxes that had been kept in [or close to] group but rejected the others or have some that are marginal & pixelate
Pretty much every area is going to be different so a universal solution is impossible other than make sure you have a suitable aerial.
Hence was born the myth of the digital aerial – all it is, is a wide band [group W] UHF aerial [/b]

Uplink – you and my old man would get on v.well.
He was a broadcast engineer for the beeb.
Me – I admit to passing on second hand knowledge

One other point

Brierly Hill is vertically polarised so your antenna should be on it's side rather than flat

uplink (just realised the relevance of your name, you don't work at Emley Moor do you?), as something of a laymen can you what you mean by "on it's side rather than flat"?

Thanks!

Emley Moor – no, far too high for me 🙂

Anyway the pic below is of a horizontal antenna – to make it vertical you'd turn it though 90 along its length

Cheers uplink, very helpful.

If i dont switch on the antennae amplifier setting on my tv then i get virtually hardly any tv channels when i try to tune in.
If your TV has a setting like that switch it on, was surprised it made so much difference as always had bad experience of external boosters.