Digital aerial - required?
 

Hi,

If you buy a Freeview box do you really need a digital aerial?

Cheers

Lee

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

Think you need a standard aerial which is capable of picking up the signal. Some older aerials may not be able to receive the signal but most can pick up the feed. We recently hooked a freeview box up to an aerial which was put up by the previous tennants over 8 years ago and it picks the feeview feed up fine.
http://www.freeview.co.uk/
http://www.freeview.co.uk/whatdoineed/aerials.html

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

Sometimes yes and sometimes no is the answer.
On quite a few freeview installs ive done for friends, the standard aerial has been able to pick up 99.9% of channels. However in other friends houses they have a required a digital aerial. Its just a case of testing it to see to be honest.
Just make sure you can get a Freeview signal at all in your area, as all the boxs carry a no refunds policy.
Hope this helps.

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

Cool - thanks for the info - so whats the difference between and "standard" aerial and a "digital-comptible" aeriel?

Thanks

Lee

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?
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There is none, the digital aerial is just equally sensitive to all channels, as most new aerials are, but when the network was designed the channels were supposed to be close together.

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

A digital aerial is a wide band aerial, you can get away with a grouped aerial, try it first and see how you get on, the cable should be changed for a high quality copper shield and braid type as used for satellite reception as it gives lower loss and better shielding.

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

we have an old aerial in the loft it must be 15yrs old and it works fine on the kids freeview.

Did they not used to say check the reception on channel 5 analogue to see if it was good enough. :shrug:

Re: Digital aerial - required?
 

No - there's no such thing as a "digital aerial". :erm:

Good, but no cigar. :)

Most people today do buy wideband aerials, but this isn't always a great idea if you're in an area with 'poor signal'.

My point of being here is to say that there is no such thing, there never has been such a thing, and there never will be such a thing as a so-called 'digital aerial'. The reason why some people need aerial upgrades is that their current aerials are the wrong group for the, co-incidentally, digital transmissions. :)