Tv aerial, Extension point and plug in boosters

Derek W

Derek W

Derek W

Soldato
Joined
1 Oct 2008
Posts
12,911
Location
Designing Buildings
Evening all,

I've recently been upgrading my tv set up in my lounge :-

Panasonic ST50 42" tv
Marintz NR1504 AV Unit
Panasonic DMR 530EB 500Gb HDD Blu ray freeview HD twin tuner
Tannoy v4i Floorstanding speakers.

Please note that the layout of the room has altered slightly :-

Lounge.jpg


The TV is now where the chair is shown, the chair where the sofa is and the sofa in front of the windows.

To get the tv plugged in I've extended the coaxial cable behind where the fireplace is shown to a new faceplate in the wall. This is then plugged into a booster before going into the Blu ray player. Through my tv i can get a good number of channels but when the weathers dodgy some of the channels disappear. However when i switch on the blu ray and view tv through that the channels are halved.

My question is, is there any point in getting a second booster or possibly replacing the aerial that's in my attic (original one i think) with a newer one?
 
Your booster is in the wrong place. Set-back boosters are a waste of time. They were invented by genius marketing men because they knew that consumers were too lazy-ass to get the job done properly, so they'd happily spend £20 on a sticking plaster solution [okay, this last bit was entirely made up but it gets the point across. They're still crap :D ]

They were invented by the same guys who have since given you the High-Gain Wide-Band aerial [an oxymoron if ever there was one], the "Digital TV aerial" [right up there with unicorns and dragons as a figment of someone's imagination] and last but by no means least... drum roll please.... The Gold Plated TV Aerial [Oh God I'm dying here....I kid you not, people actually buy this crap] :D:D:D:D:D BTW, this last paragraph is entirely correct. All the above is marketing BS.

Anyway, the thing with aerials and RF cable is you need to compensate for signal loss in the cable before the signal goes through the cable. IOW, you can't get back what's already lost. Get rid of the set-back booster. All it's doing is giving you noise and potentially signal overload. It's not helping; it's making things worse.

Never waste your money on a second booster when the first one is in the same room.



A change of aerial might actually help. A lot depends where you live and what channels your local transmitter uses. More importantly, your future viewing pleasure relies very heavily on what Government will do with the national transmitter channel frequencies. They've already sold off Channels 61-68 to the mobile phone companies (4G). We've also had 5 years of Digital Switchover and they still haven't finished messing with that yet.

If you plan to change the aerial then go for a Log Periodic. This is a true wide-band aerial. On its own it can't match the peak gain of the wide-band. But it is better at the lower frequencies. Add a masthead amp and it trounces the so-called "high-gain" aerial completely. There's nowhere in the UK than an amplified Log Periodic won't work. It's a really good universal solution.



The masthead amp will do two things. The first is that it will increase the effectiveness of the Log Periodic aerial. The second is that it will boost the signal enough to overcome the losses in the cable down to the lounge TV. Boosting close to the aerial means better signal to noise ratio. Boosting at the TV back means the signal has already degraded, so you end up with a dirty signal boosted in power but of poor quality.
 
Last edited:
i had a feeling I'd read something on here before regarding the booster boxes being a load of crap but wasn't sure. I'll take a look into the masthead amplifiers first as that would probably remedy the issue. Will need to get a socket installed in the loft first though as there's none at the moment but that shouldnt be much hassle as theres access through a hall cupboard that can be utilised.

Any recommendations on an amplifier as this is all new to me!
 
Don't get a socket fitted in the loft. It'll cost you more than the entire job and, from a safety point of view they're not the greatest idea.

There's masthead amps that have remote power. It goes up the aerial cable. We call it phantom power. It makes a simpler install and also a safer one as well. The power supply takes the place of the set-back amp. The wiring is the same: one in, one out. So your power supply is somewhere you can keep an eye on it.

If you want, you can have an entire kit (aerial, plugs, extra bits of linking cable, loft amp with remote power supply) all delivered in 48 hrs for £30 if you know the right person ( ;) ;) ;) ) Quality gear too, not cheap Chinese rubbish like you might find on Ebay.
 
Basically I've got an ancient aerial in the loft

fKljvRY.jpg


The white cable runs across the rafters to the gable and down behind the plasterboard and insulation.

ZcpnbUn.jpg

The cable terminates at the faceplate (old tv position) but I've ran a second cable behind the skirting board to a second faceplate.

1fEz1sZ.jpg

The cable then goes into a booster box.

vueZZwY.jpg

which in turn goes into the back of the Blu Ray player and picks up so many channels.

3ECu03Z.jpg


I would have thought that if i had a socket in the attic I can cut the current cable (its got a bit of slack) fix a couple of f-connectors to either end to allow for plugging into and out of the amplifier and its out of harms way.

I took a look at the aerial thats on the back of my house and it does have a box fitted to it (may just be a splitter rather than amplifier (no power source)) which runs into my kitchen and bedroom but is currently not in use.

Having googled the stuff you're suggesting I would need to first connect the amplifier in the loft then the cable which runs to the first faceplate would need to be replaced with an f-connector face plate, thats then connected into the remote power supply before that runs to the second faceplate?
 
lucid said:
You're making things more complicated than they need to be.
Click to expand...

How so? I'm wanting to have minimal disruption to the house so either having a cable running from my distribution board to the attic for a socket and connecting everything up there or connecting through the amp in the attic and replacing a faceplate in the lounge seem the easiest options? :confused:
 
Because unless the wall sockets are DC blocking then there's no reason to change them.

All you're doing in the lounge is replacing the old booster with the new masthead power supply. Oh, and you're swapping a couple of fly leads for ones with F connectors. I'd say that's pretty much as minimal for disruption as you can get.


As far as the loft is concerned you're unplugging the old aerial, adding an F connector, and connecting the masthead amp, then using a F to F coax cable to hook up the new aerial.
 
If you're going to put a socket in the loft then just move that setback amp there, it will compensate for the signal loss through your downlead and that socket daisy chain you have. The main advantage of masthead amps as said is the use of remote powering, putting an amp where there's no mains power.

Also from that aerial pic you have make sure the aerial is horizontal if the signal polarization is horizontal, looks like it's at a 45 degree angle to me, also try different parts of your loft, gain can vary greatly from one part of the loft to another.
 
terminator2k2 said:
Silly question but did it work ok before you movd the tv ?
Click to expand...

The Channels that disappear have always done it regardless of the TV's position. Its typically during bad weather / winter that things disappear and more towards the Summer the signal is better and they appear again.

EDIT

The aerial is level, its just I was only on a chair peeking into the loft that it looks like its on an angle.
 
Blind recommendation mmm fitting a amp to aerial which plays up during the winter or bad weather isn't going to solve anything , get as much gain from a decent aerial is the way to go here , if there is too much loss in the loft , then the aerial needs to be repositioned out side, amplifiers should only be introduced to help with loss in cable runs.
 
I don't disagree with getting as much signal as possible from the aerial. I just strongly disagree that a wideband high-gain is the correct aerial for the job.

The problem is that they're not high-gain all the way through the channel range. (Look at the graph above that illustrates this). Take a quick look at the MUX channels in the Brechin area. They go from 22 right up to 60. So simply recommending a high-gain wideband aerial as a fix-all solution just isn't right. If you truly want something universal then a good amplified full size Log Period is the the better solution. The flat gain curve means it's equally good right across the channel range. It's physically easier to install because it doesn't reed the large reflector. Best of all, when the Government decide the rearrange the Mux channels again then the aerial will still be good.

Oh, and for the record it wasn't me that suggested adding a mast amp to the old antenna. That doesn't mean it won't work though. But getting a decent result with an old unbalanced aerial mounted in a loft just isn't worth the hassle.
 
A masthead amp may be necessary for a very poor signal area but in most cases it's not needed. Far less hassle to place the booster/amp a couple of meters away in the loft, provided you use a decent amp and decent low-loss co-ax this setup will work perfect for the majority of homes.
 
well I opted to go for a labgear masthead amp. Got it all wired up and retune the tv.......no signal therefore no channels! Think tomorrow evening will be spent checking for stray wires which may be causing the problem :mad:
 
terminator2k2 said:
Blind recommendation mmm fitting a amp to aerial which plays up during the winter or bad weather isn't going to solve anything , get as much gain from a decent aerial is the way to go here , if there is too much loss in the loft , then the aerial needs to be repositioned out side, amplifiers should only be introduced to help with loss in cable runs.
Click to expand...

You don't know it's the aerial playing up, the signal in the loft may be perfectly fine and high gain aerials are generally big & bulky so in the loft you're limited with where you can position them.

Derek W said:
well I opted to go for a labgear masthead amp. Got it all wired up and retune the tv.......no signal therefore no channels! Think tomorrow evening will be spent checking for stray wires which may be causing the problem :mad:
Click to expand...

Not necessarily stray wires, your faceplates could be blocking the DC voltage from the power supply, usually the ones with a PCB do this, could also be bad connections or bad cable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom