Boggled by ariel!!!

Hi All

i really hope that someone is able to help as very confused!

basically I have floors in my house and each floor has a TV. The top floor has a TV that works well with no problem. The middle floor has another TV which up until yesterday was working fine. Now the picture is all distorted and the sound flashes in and out on every channel. The TV on the ground floor has stopped working and claims to have no signal. All three TV's are less than 6 months old and worked fine when I got them. Does this suggest that there is something wrong with my ariel and should i get a repairman in. I live in Guernsey and all my TVS are LG.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

Katy

How long has the aerial you have been up? is it on the roof or in the loft?
Do you have a masthead splitter on the aerial pole ? or maybe a power supply unit behind one of the tv,s ??

to be honest i could ask a few more questions but i really need to know more info regarding the set up you have.

Do the cables run outside the house or down the wall cavity ?

I was going to suggest it might be related to "The Big Switchover", but according to freeview.co.uk you've had digital telly since at least 1970:

http://www.freeview.co.uk/Switchover/The-Channel-Islands

Are you sure all TVs are connected to the same aerial system? If so, it would seem likely that either your aerial, any distribution equipment (splitters, boosters etc) or a common piece of cable (perhaps the first bit from the aerial) is faulty.

I would also suggest you investigate anything that may have commenced between your aerial and the transmitter at Fremont Point. So many things can suddenly create reception problems: a new mobile phone mast, a building site crane, a cattle shed... basically anything that either obscures line-of-sight to the transmitter, or is large and metal, or emits large amounts of microwave/RF (even though it is not at TV frequencies).

My bro's apartment lost all mobile phone reception (2G and 3G) suddenly, and he quickly noticed a pattern between signal availability and whether or not a mobile crane at a building site between him and the transmitter was up or down.

BunnyLodge said:

The top floor has a TV that works well with no problem. The middle floor has another TV which up until yesterday was working fine. Now the picture is all distorted and the sound flashes in and out on every channel. The TV on the ground floor has stopped working and claims to have no signal.

Click to expand...

First off, if it were some building or mast in the way then all three TVs might be equally affected. I'm not ruling that out, but I think the clue to this is given by the location of the TVs... or more specifically the lengths of cable to each TV. Top floor - shortest. Ground floor - longest.

My gut feeling is that your signal is a bit weak. This could be because the aerial has moved or there's some damage. Whatever it is there's still been just enough to feed the TVs until recently, but the situation has reached a tipping point. Digital TV is a bit of an all or nothing affair. Once the signal drops below a certain level then it's Goodnight Vienna. I think you've lost TV on the longer cables first because of losses down the cable added on top of a weakening signal.

Anyway, I think a call to an aerial guy is in order.