The TV aerials on my roof point in two directions, are wired together and are prob non-digital due to age. and the signal is poor especially BBC.
we have been quoted £150 to replace the aerial, new cables, three way splitter with signal amp, one new socket in upstairs. (easy access from the loft spaces)
Does this sound good, or should I buy a roof ladder, a new aerial, cable and spend a weekend messing on the roof? Apart from having a WCA style weekend in A&E, I could save maybe £50, once I had bought the roof ladder (shinny asset), new aerial and bit n bobs.
Sounds good to me given what is involved.
Finally a thread where the "will I die if..." Question applies if DIYing it.
Is there such a thing as a digital aerial?
can i borrow/rent that ladder when you are done? need to fit aerial too
just need follow where all the neighbours aerials are pointing isn't it? how hard could it be 😀
price sounds fine. i sell to aerial riggers all day.
a general rule of thumb in the trade is £30 per tv point plus the price of the equipment.
i can sell you the stuff a load cheaper, but you then need to climb on the roof, insurance for this costs. the signal might be too strong/weak. a meter to tell you this costs 1K+.
Is there such a thing as a digital aerial?
In so far as it's an aerial capable of reliably receiving the frequency range used by DTV, yes. It's not a "digital aerial" in the literal sense but an aerial for digital. See also, "milk bottle."
Just pay the cash...
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Sounds like a really old install tbh! Why not buy all the gear minus the ladder and put the aerial in the attic space!
I recently got a guy out to run an extra couple of lines from my sat dish to an additional TV in my new extension - diametrically opposite corner. He ran it thought the loft which is nice. I think it cost me about £80. It took him about 1hr so most of that was labour, however you can't just buy a shortish run of sat cable - you buy it in quantities far greater than you really need, so by the time you've got all the kit and spent four times longer to install than a pro you'd really wish you'd just paid someone to do it. £150 for a full new install sounds pretty good to me. definitely not a rip off, and probably not that much more expensive than you could do it yourself.
You may as well get a DAB areal on there while you're at it and maybe an FM areal too.
check how strong your signal is likely to be using wolfbane website
I then just did a diy loft install - you can take as long as you like fine tuning the direction, doing it this way gave me 60+ channels when a local installer would only guarantee 20 odd.
Much cheaper too and you can run cable wherever you want. Ebay are cheap if you know how much cable you need - only buy WF100 though
to save 150 quid I wouldn't get a ladder out, let alone go and buy one first. 🙂
Slight hijack as I've been thinking about upgrading our aerial. It provides a decent signal to one tele but the the other with an older digi box (which has always been a bit flakey) struggles a bit. Currently splitting the aerial with a cheap white, Y splitter as below. Is there something better for the job? Might be easier for me to try that before fiddling with other things.
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To the OP I've got the ladders but I'd pay £150 not to have to go up them fully extended
the prediction suggests a high gain antenna for one direction, but standard for the other, which the fitter suggested we will get a low signal due to a hill in the way...
I have also been told that due to the concrete tiled roof, the signal will be poor in the roof void.
I understand that splitters also reduce the signal strength, so if your using a splitter in a poor signal area, ensure that you have a booster or amplifier on the system as well, if not a combined splitter/amp.
Hopefully this will be money well spent..
Neighbour had a new aerial fitted, the fitter choose to point at the local repeater, which does not have a complete list of channels.
We need to a high gain aerial and amplified.
Some thing like:
http://www.tradeworks.tv/acatalog/Televes_DAT_HD.html
and a distribution amp of:
http://www.aerialsat.com/prod/antiference-a281lr-pro-lte-2-in-8plus1-way-amp.html
which is high quality amp and connectors.
We also needed a mast head amplifier (which was driven by the distribution amp), but probably do not need that now (signal levels have increased since they turned off analogue).
Local installers did not want to install the stuff above (wanted to install cheaper craper stuff).
We have had the above installed for probably 10 years now and it has been faultless (signal comes from ~35 miles away with hills and trees in the way).