Digi box

[col]

Just been trying something you said gbb,the cheap little indoor aerial that my son used for the telly,actualy gets all the channels working,albeit a low signal strength.What a sickener,i spent two hours after buying the stuff,laying the coaxle, routing it and setting it up,only to be bettered by a little indoor thing

 

[marinyork]

Just been trying something you said gbb,the cheap little indoor aerial that my son used for the telly,actualy gets all the channels working,albeit a low signal strength.What a sickener,i spent two hours after buying the stuff,laying the coaxle, routing it and setting it up,only to be bettered by a little indoor thing

Well that's very lucky, but not unheard of. One other thing I was going to mention, if the strength is about a quarter bar I'm amazed it's working. In my experience most boxes need about 40% signal strength to be stable but can just about work on less than that. If you plug the STB directly into the feed from the roof you should be getting 90% + on all channels with probably lower on the things like TMF and The Hits but still very high. If it's a quarter bar it could suggest that the signal has degraded, that would be about the right amount on a long cable run if you haven't used satellite cable.

 

[col]

The signal strength is barely showing,just a midges at the bottom of the bar,but the channels are fine?very strange? With the extention cable from the tv aerial,its about a quarter of the way up the bar?

When i bought the cable it said it was tv and satalite cable,about £12 for 25 metres.

 

[domtyler]

Are you sure you know what you're doing? Might be best to make a call in the morning maybe? Leave it to the experts so to speak!!

 

[marinyork]

Ah, well fair enough, if it's high quality stuff it should work and it's slightly puzzling it doesn't. I really would try it plugged into the roof feed directly just to see if you can get it above that level, it would confirm whether the roof top feed was good or not.

Unfortunately there are several reasons why it might not work. The aerial could have blown off course. It might be a group A aerial and picking up The Hits and TMF out of group channel but it's very weak power anyway so who knows but this seems not to explain the whole story as all channels are registering a weak signal. The cabling from the roof could have got water in it - rare but has been known to happen in older aerial cables. The STB could be tuned to the wrong transmitter, if you said you'd borrowed it, maybe your mate's house is on a different transmitter - I've done this before when moving freeview boxes and forgotten. I find it curious you can get it working on portable aerial, don't complain!

 

[col]

I didnt know there was a way of changing where it tunes too?we just went throught the start up procedure and tuned it in when we first put it on.

Thanks for the advice DT,but its safe,we are only dealing with the equivalant of putting the aerial cable into a tv set,but if you mean about going onto the roof,no worries there mate

 

[marinyork]

Well aside from sticking a different aerial in it (which is what you've done with the rooftop and portable one) there isn't a way of changing where it tunes to. My point was most local areas have a choice of at least two transmitters and that your portable might not be pointing to the same transmitter as your rooftop one. If you've scanned though it's certainly not what I've done before.

Hmmm, you do know you could build your own aerial if you wanted to! Another tip with yagi portable aerials, if you put a sheet of tinfoil on cardboard on the back it can act as a reflector and boost the signal, just like on rooftop aerials.

 

[col]

Not heard of that?Is there any particular size of foil on card needed,or as big as you like,also does it have to be connected in any way?or just placed behind the aerial?

 

[yenrod]

COL: Must be the cable connection - well thats what i reckon....