Installing a TV aerial

There are many choices to make in selecting and installing a TV aerial. These choices can make the difference between lousy reception with no digital channels and near perfect reception.

Aerial position

Choose the first location in this list you can use. Each step down the list results in further loss of quality that can not be made up for in any way.

• Use a rooftop aerial whenever possible
• Loft aerial is 2nd best
• A medium gain indoor aerial mounted as high up as possible
• Set-top aerials are a last resort, and give a junk quality picture in most locations. For use when portability is necessary.

As an example of how much difference aerial height can make, here is an example of someone finding a 15-21dB difference between loft and roof mount.

Size & gain

• CAI 2 aerials are suitable for most locations
• Very high gain (CAI 1) aerials are good for fringe reception areas, but are only suitable for rooftop use. They don't work well in other locations.
• CAI 3 lower gain aerials are suitable for houses close to the transmitter
• Some aerials have less than honest manufacturer's specs.

CAI Approval

Many aerials and related equipment lack features which, while unnecessary for analogue recption, are important for good quality digital reception. CAI approved equipment meets the necessary requirements.

Some aerials are available in group versions as well as wideband. Typically only the wideband version is CAI approved, due to costs, and the group versions are normally built to the same standards. These can thus be regarded as if CAI approved, even though they're not.

Non-approved aerials are ok for analogue reception, but are prone to causing problems with digital TV, which is more demanding in some respects.

CAI approved aerials are divided into categories 1,2 and 3.

• 1 is for very high gain aerials for difficult reception areas (eg Televes DAT75)
• 2 aerials are suitable for most properties
• 3 are lower gain for locations close to the transmitter

Wideband aerials

A CAI approved wideband aerial in a good choice. These will pretty much always work. The vast majority of aerials sold are wideband. Wideband means it will receive the full range of TV transmission frequencies, making them a safe choice.

Group aerials

Group aerials receive less than the full range of TV transmission frequencies, but perform significantly better within their more limited frequency range. Hence where wideband is not needed, performance can be improved if necessary by using a suitable group aerial. This is a useful method to improve reception in problem areas.

A lot of people need to stick to a wideband aerial to receive all the frequencies in use locally, but not all do.

Choose an aerial that is:

• the suitable band
• the same model type as the CAI approved wideband version

All the channels you need to receive can be determined by looking up the channels on which you:

• receive analogue
• receive digital
• will receive digital after the switchover

A group aerial will need to receive all those frequencies.

Gain

CAI category 2 aerials are good for most locations.

Very high gain aerials (CAI 1) are used for problem locations, but very high gain aerials do have issues, so ensure all other installation issues are solved before resorting to one of these.

Polarization

TV signals are broadcast with either horizontal or vertical polarization. The usual yagi TV aerials should be positioned horizontally for horizontally polarized signals, and vertically for vertical signals. Check (online) the polarisation of the transmitter you're receiving, or just turn the aerial to see which gives better reception.

Baluns

Nearly all TV aerials are described by the manufacturer as 75 ohm aerials, yet nearly all are really designed as 300 ohm aerials, with construction details reducing this to some degree, but not to 75 ohm. Connecting a 300 ohm aerial to 75? cable causes loss of gain, tendency to reflections, and some degree of degradation of signal quality.

Better aerials have a small balun inside that transforms the 300 ohm signal to a genuine 75 ohm feed. All CAI approved aerials have this.

Loft, Rooftop & Set-top

Small set-top aerials vary in performance from poor to useless in most areas. In strong signal locations one may be ok for portable TVs. The advantage is minimal cost, no installation & portability.

A rooftop gives the best vantage point for TV aerials for several reasons.

• Being higher up there's less to get in the path of the signal from the transmitter.
• There is no interaction with roofing materials.
• The aerial is further from sources of electrical interference in the house, improving S/N ratio
• TV aerials are affected to some degree by metalwork in the loft. Very high gain aerials are especially prone to this.

In practice roof mounting gives a much stronger and better quality signal than a loft aerial.

A loft aerial will be quite satisfactory in many cases, but not always. Rooftop is of course less convenient and more expense. Outdoor aerials, poles and cables have limited life, so the expense is repeated over time.

Manufacturer's specs aren't always honest, making comparison of manufacturer specs misleading. Also real life aerial performance varies widely with frequency, so a single dB figure is of limited use. Real aerial performance can be compared using a graph of frequency vs gain for the major brands of aerial. (Link needed to graphs.)

Loft aerial choice

Very high gain aerials (CAI 1) are designed specifically for rooftop mounting. If used in a loft they generally give poorer performance than a standard medium gain aerial.

VHF reception

TV aerials don't make good VHF FM aerials, but they're often much better than internal VHF antennas, telescopic rods, or the popular rabbit's ears. If you've decided not to spend the money on a separate VHF aerial, in some cases you can get a real improvement in FM reception by using a diplexer at the radio to split off any VHF received by the TV aerial and pass it to the radio.

A metal diplexer only costs 2 or 3 pounds. Avoid £1 unscreened plastic diplexers, these let interference into the aerial system, affecting digital reception.

Avoid using a splitter instead of a diplexer, as these cause an extra 3-4dB loss, often degrading reception.

Some TV aerials are designed to give VHF recption as well as UHF. These give significantly better VHF reception than the ones that aren't, though they're still far from perfect. A dedicated VHF aerial will always outperform a UHF aerial with VHF reception, but adds costs of course.

For more info see VHF aerial

Extreme installations

To obtain long distance (DX) TV reception , the following methods can be used to boost reception range. They're not required for standard domestic setups.

Tower mounted aerials can achieve long distance line of sight reception, avoiding all obstacles. (Don't attach huge rods to chimney stacks, they will only cause a collapse.)

Phased aerial arrays combine the outputs of multiple aerials for greater output without the addition of noise that an amplifier causes.

Narrow band aerial arrays consist of a set of narrow frequency aerials, with outputs combined. The result is full frequency reception with the better performance of narrow band aerials.

See Also

• Wiki Contents
• Wiki Subject Categories
• Cable for TV aerials
• Aerial amplifier