Antenna Woes

Digital television is something we've had for quite a while now, and finally today I have gotten around to doing something about the antenna deficiencies we've had.

We got a digital Personal Video Recorder in April 2008.  It's a nice unit although it has broken down once.  Last night we were watching "Red Dwarf - Back to Earth" on ABC2 and ten minutes into the show the transmission dropped out, and the screen stayed black for about ten minutes.  We DID get to see the end, and had seen the start, it was just the middle bit we missed.  Such is life.

With Digital TV, you either get the signal or you don't.  Back on analogue you get varying degrees of picture quality from "rock-steady" to "quite snowy", etc, etc.  But with digital it's basically all or nothing.  So when you do get a dodgy signal, often the last picture you've received will freeze on the screen, and then it picks up when there's next a signal.

We had a lousy signal ever since the repairs to the antenna were done after the house fire (more on that later); but with the coming of the digital TV, it improved enormously and I haven't really done anything about it, despite knowing the quality was not 100%.  Occasionally we'd miss programmes due to dropouts, but it's just one of those things you mean to do something about but never get around to.

Anyway, I had a visit from an antenna installer yesterday who has measured the signal strength, informed me that it is quite good, so there's definitely a problem with either the antenna or the connection.  We may need a new antenna, the existing antenna properly connected, or re-wired.

Anyway, he's coming back this afternoon as he didn't have a long enough ladder with him.  The price you pay for living in a two-storey house!