Right the kids have finally ground us down and are having tv’s for Christmas. I refuse to pay for multi room sky so just want a digi ariel thing hopefully up in the loft and two coax coming from it to their bedrooms. There’s no power in the loft so boosters etc aren’t an option.
Would I be better on the outside of the house?
Cost, choice, etc etc would all be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Loft is fine, unless your surrounded by taller buildings, have a look at all the neighbors ariels to see which way the majority are pointing to give you a clue which trans they are using.

Aerials outside of the house are always better but I hate birds crapping on my roof or onto the path below so i’ve got an aerial in the loft. Its a small std areal and I get a perfect picture on my downstairs TV that goes through the Sky box and is boosted, and not so good, but watchable a signal on my upstairs TV that has no booster. I’ve got a high gain ariel to install in the loft to improve this.

Also there is no such thing as a ‘Digital Ariel’. That’s just a term used for dodgy installers to sell you a normal ariel at a huge premium. All you need to decide is if you want or need a ‘High Gain’ areal. If you live in a hilly area or far from a main transmission mast and get a crummy signal then you will need a high gain areal. I’d suggest if you’re installing in the loft then definitely get a high gain areal based on my experience.

As far as boosters go, you can get boosters that you plug into a normal socket, so if you’ve got no power in the loft then you can still get a signal booster.

TVs in the kids’ rooms?

Man up and tell them No!

You’ll regret it in the long run, trust me. I’m a father of 4 and I spend my life trying to prise them out of the house, and that’s *without* TVs in their room.

aerial in our house just sits next to the tv.

works grand*

* I can see the transmitter from my front window when i put on my specs.

wrightyson, i sell all you need to the trade.
give mae a bell if you get stuck.

tony on 01132633500

Also there is no such thing as a ‘Digital Ariel’. That’s just a term used for dodgy installers to sell you a normal ariel at a huge premium. All you need to decide is if you want or need a ‘High Gain’ areal.

Slightly unfair. With the change over to digital, lots of areas needed a higher gain antenna to get a decent signal and as you only needed this for the digital signal you can see why these antennas are called ‘Digital antennas’.

Have a look at freesat. DIY install of a dish is very easy. You may have an extra cable out on your existing sky dish that you can use.

Right the kids have finally ground us down and are having tv’s for Christmas.

Wrightyson earlier today.

My three girls kept saying that they should have TVs in their rooms. I informed them that, seeing as I wouldn’t allow a TV in the kitchen, there was no chance that was ever going to happen. YouTube/iPlayer/etc on the iPad/their iPods/phones seems to satisfy them now.

Oh, and we have an aerial in the loft along with a distribution unit to send Sky and ‘normal’ TV to various points around the house which works well, but we do have power in the loft. As above – why not put a quad LNB on your sat dish (if you don’t already have one) and use that signal with a freeview box or a used sky box?
Otherwise Ton’s your man for this stuff.

Have always had just the one tv in the house but with one kid being an 11 yr old girl and the other an 8 yr old lad tv wars are becoming ever more frequent!
Currently got standard sky dish supplying just lounge tv with sky plus, so two coax as normal. Was thinking of a magic eye thingy to still supply sky to our bedroom, is that possible?
What is the quad lnb? About to go hd (keeping with the times) so will have a free sky box. Then if I bought two tvs with freeview on board would that work?

Thanks btw ton. What would you do in this scenario. Happy to buy whatever I need off you to get up and running.

I know I will get flamed for this,
if you need a booster/splitter in the loft you would be able to take a spur of the lighting circuit(make sure it’s a permamently live), appropriately fused at 3 amps I wouldn’t really see a problem with that.
I have a loft aerial with a booster/splitter feeding 5 TVs around the house with no issues. We are about 12 miles from our transmitter you can have a look on Ofcom website to see where your main or relay transmitter is.

TVs in the kids’ rooms?

Man up and tell them No!

You’ll regret it in the long run, trust me. I’m a father of 4 and I spend my life trying to prise them out of the house, and that’s *without* TVs in their room.

Wow!

Our two boys room is like currys tv, Xbox ps3 laptop pc you name it they have it. Much of it bought with their own money. To “punish” them we make them sit with mum n dad to watch what we watch 😉

wrightyson, 1 32 element aerial, 1 loft spike, 1 2 way splitter, 1 roll cable.

sorted.

No need for power in the loft – if you fit a decent mast head amplifier it will come with a unit that plugs in between your wall plate and you telly and puts 12VDC back up your aerial cable to supply the amp. You may need need this at all depending on your reception strength.

The type of aerial you will require depends on how strong your signal is – bigger isn’t always better. There’s shouldn’t be a massive difference in price between the different types.

Ton what would that little lot cost me to get posted out to Derbyshire? Got plenty of standard coax so won’t need the cable unless its better stuff than I’ve got?

wrightyson, £25 + vat including delivery

I used one of these for my eldest TV

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1080359.htm

Works excellent.

That’ll do then ton. How can I pay you? Shall I give you a call on the phone number tomorrow? Thanks again and do you do installation diagrams 😆

give me a bell in the morning mate.

Footflaps, maybe it was a bit of an overriding comment, but i’ve heard of people being charge upwards of £50 or more for a so called digital aerial when you can buy a half decent one for £20, so in those cases it seems that a few of the more unscrupulous installers are trying to bamboozle people with BS tech talk to extract more dosh out of them.

They are supposed to be turning up the strength of the digital signal as soon as they turn off the analogue signal as it was causing interference to the analogue signal. Once they do that then a small low gain antenna should be sufficient in the vast majority of places.

They are supposed to be turning up the strength of the digital signal as soon as they turn off the analogue signal as it was causing interference to the analogue signal. Once they do that then a small low gain antenna should be sufficient in the vast majority of places.

That’s been done and the signals sold to mobile phone companies.

Thanks very much ton. I’ll set the compass for Sutton colefield as advised.