Moving digital aerial from loft to roof - what to ask them

[JamesA]

Currently we have freeview via a 48 band high gain aerial in the loft.
We get most channels despite having that thin foil backed insulation on the inside of the roof, but not the multiplex with Dave, Sky Sports News etc.
I want to get a company in to install it on the roof, as I don't want to do a Rod Hull.

The current analogue aerial (I don't use) is fitted on a pole at the top of the gable at the side of the house so its just above roof height.
Wire runs to the loft.
1 wire runs from the loft behind the plasterboards to the living room downstairs and a second to the master bedroom.
I may wish to run a cable to extra bedrooms a few years down the road.

I want to keep this setup rather than having them run wire down the side of my house.

Currently the aerial is connected directly using a coupler to the living room cable.
There is a very old 2 way booster in the loft, but using that makes the signals worse (presumably it's boosting the noise)

I want to keep costs down and buy most of the stuff myself as I don't want to pay 100s of pounds just to watch the new Red Dwarf specials on Dave.

Has anyone any advice as to what to buy and what to leave to the company?
I'm tempted to provide everything but the cable.
I'd probably buy from Toolstation, Screwfix or tlc-direct

Pole?
Brackets?
Masthead amplifier?
Masthead amplifier power supply (one that goes behind tv in living room)
Loft Splitter/Amplifier?

Current aerial: http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/MXD48.html

 

[ericmark]

A lot depends on your area. Where I live I can still use a banded aerial which is cheaper and lighter so less susceptible to wind damage. But just a small distance away where people tune to Moel-y-parc rather than Winter Hill they need wide band aerials.

Because what can be done is so dependent on locality it is hard to give good advice.

Also one of the problems of the multiplex signals is they can't be seen when tuning to analogue and all too often a video, games machine, sky box, etc can be sending out an analogue signal on the same frequency as you are trying to receive the multiplex signal. Unfortunately this is not limited to your house and the sky boxes were all originally tuned to channel 68 which has caused many problems in this area as now there is a multiplex signal on channel 68 in our case channel 5 and many are unable to receive channel 5 as a result.

If you have a set where you can see the channel or frequency then find the frequency of the missing multiplex signal and try tuning into that frequency and see if there is an analogue signal on same frequency.

I am lead to understand there are also problems where the signal is 4 and 6 channels removed not sure on this but some old analogue units do seem to cause problems on all channels and switching all analogue transmitting devices off at least for a test is worth doing.

Of course you can't control next door and if they use satellite then they may be completely unaware that their equipment is causing a problem.

My parents have this problem and noted when one neighbour was on holiday channel 5 worked OK. And had to move aerial sideways rather than up to miss the one house causing a problem.

I hope that helps?

 

[Steve]

Have you tried to recieve freeview on the analogue aerial thats there already?

You may well find you can get a good picture with that, and no booster etc. "Digital aerials" are a big con.

 

[electronicsuk]

Has anyone any advice as to what to buy and what to leave to the company?
I'm tempted to provide everything but the cable.
I'd probably buy from Toolstation, Screwfix or tlc-direct

Pole?
Brackets?
Masthead amplifier?
Masthead amplifier power supply (one that goes behind tv in living room)
Loft Splitter/Amplifier?

Current aerial: http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/MXD48.html[/QUOTE]

Leave it all to the company - as with any tradesman, he/she/they may have particular brands they they prefer to fit, and they'll probably be able to get the parts cheaper than you through a trade account or bulk buying.

 

[JamesA]

Leave it all to the company - as with any tradesman, he/she/they may have particular brands they they prefer to fit, and they'll probably be able to get the parts cheaper than you through a trade account or bulk buying.

Makes sense, as long as they don't whack a 50-100% markup on them

Not all tradesmen are as honest as you get on here.
So it's nice to know what you're talking about first.

What I don't know is whether mastheads are always better or whether a loft amplifier is better where its only 4-5 meters from the aerial to the loft booster location.

(Old roof aerial has poor reception. I think previous occupants just used Sky).