Posting on behalf of a friend so I dont have specifics. Basically, she wants to get freeview but doesn't have access to the loft/outside of property to fix up an external aerial. I know the normal reception in her area is good and the house next doors freeviwe signal is perfect from an roof mounted aerial. Will she get freeview from an internal aerial? And is there some special type (examples appreciated) of aerial will she need? Thanks people.
Best thing to do is buy a wideband aerial designed for exterior mounting and whack it up inside. The little loop aerials designed for internal reception won't be much cop for digital TV.
I have a cheap ariel i've had for years, about the size of an A4 sheet, indoors, vuagley pointed to get a good analogue reception, and I can pick up all the channels, with only a few cheaper looking ones that are sketchy in bad weather.
I would try and avoid ones with boosters built into them as they tend to have poorly designed (cheap) aerial elements and wack a cheap booster in there to make them work. You then end up with quite a noisy signal which isn't good for digital. Much better to get a quality non boosted aerial and if that isn't enough then boost it. Chris
Been reading abi on some of the AV Forums, and the Telecam TCE2000 seems to popup quite a bit. £9.99 from Argos so worth a try as I can return it if it sucks.
perfect thread as i was just about to post one myself however, i have the TCE2000 and it gives an amazing signal for normal TV, but plugged up to my philips DTR1500 box (bought yesterday) and it doesnt even work. so i was looking round and a few of the "one for all" series look alright, but they are again inner loop ones so im not so sure seen a decent one (in reviews anyway) at mappers for 19.99 sv1920 i think
Hmm i've been wondering the same for a while, so ill add myself to this to see what people come up with.
I have a cheap dipole connected to a surplus preamp for HDTV on my PC. It works great. I have also seen a Toshiba laptop with integrated HDTV that will flawlessly receive HDTV *inside the store*.
Remember we're in the UK. You need very good reception to get digital terrestrial TV over here. A dipole isn't sufficient.