Please read before commenting: I’m not saying all aerial guys are scamming the entire town. I’m just discussing a discussion I had with 2 friends who are in the trade. They told me it goes on a lot.
Of course it does. Anywhere that 'experts' can use their 'expertise' that your average member of the public doesn't know jack about will have a (significant) fraction of those 'experts' be basically conmen. See also: Car technicians.
The problem with Dog Hill is it is a Freeview light so only carries 3 multiplexes as you say rather than the 7 Multiplexes which Winter Hill carries so it would be natural to try and receive the full lineup of channels which would be why installers recommend the extra cost / effort. As for Masthead amplifiers, I used to do extensive testing on mastheads for our installtions as often we would be looking into 700 & 800 MHz 4G transmitters (typically a 12sector site) and I wouldl say that most of the main manufactures make very good mastheads with great filtering which don't bring in any out of band signals. However I would agree there are a breed of national aerial installers (They used to advertise in the Sun) in the UK who are taught how to upsell / scam customers and lack any technical knowledge so just keep trying things till it works. Freeview will work down to -32bd which it was never designed for so there is a good chance the 10 element aerials are still working. As a comparison analogue TV needed around 77db for a fully Q5 picture. Also Freeview works well with multi path signals as it can add numerous mutlipath signals together along with it error corrections it is a pretty robust system. Down here in Kent I discovered a Freeview light TX (Gillingham Testing Centre) which rebroadcasts on the same frequency as the main TX (Bluebell Hill) using SFN (Single Frequency Network Tech) I've never seen another one elsewhere in the UK. Sorry to ramble but an interesting video :)
@@MrKnowwun When I first started installing TV aerials (42yrs ago) it blew my mind that they just copied what was already there and were stuffed if it didn't work.
I had always assumed people often try to avoid relays because they carry less channels/muxes. I remember back in the old analogue days trying very hard to pick up a signal from winter hill just to receive the new fangled channel 5 when we had a repeater only a few miles away. I'm pretty sure that DTV wasn't available on local repeaters in the early days too.
Dog hill does not carry all of the multiplexes, In fact it has a paltry selection of channels. if you want the full range of channels you need winter hill. Much experience here when caravanning of ignoring the local relay, and aiming for the high power main site with all the multiplexes, and channels with my directional antenna.
We live about 1.5 miles from Blackhill Tx. We have a small stub of coax hanging out the back of the telly with about 3 inches of the screen stripped back. Works a treat, never any issues. 😂😂😂
In strong signal areas it's perfectly feasible to just get a signal from a piece of wire. That reminds me, in an area that had good Waltham line of sight, post DSO, despite Waltham being about 30 miles or so away, I was able to get the digital signals (including the COMs) off a T-type indoor wire aerial propped near the window. Sandy Heath, despite being over 10 miles closer, would not get anything on any indoor aerial and you'd need a rooftop or loft aerial.
At first, I thought you meant a town in Texas (TX) called Blackhill, and wondered what kind of Texan calls a TV a "telly", then I realized you meant Tx to mean "transmitter".
Some of the relay stations don't carry all 6 free view multiplexes. if you want all of the free view channels then you need to go to the master transmitter ( winter hill in this case). We have that issue down here. Stockland all 6 most relays only 3 or 4 matrixes.
Where I live is on a relay, most aerials are pointing at the relay but a few people are pointing at the main mast, the relay doesn't carry all services so I always assumed people pointed at the main mast to get all the muxes. That said a lot of antennas are the wrong polarisation
Which makes absolutely no sense because the benefits of a stronger signal from the relay are wiped out by the incorrect polarity! Meaning you might as well have gone for the horizontally polarized main transmitter...
One problem is that relays like Dog Hill usually only carry three muxes whereas Winter Hill carries all of them. Some people are disappointed if they don't get ALL of the channels. That reminds me, I need to get the local aerials guy out to mine. The reflector has detached and is swinging in the breeze. Not a huge priority as we tend to use FreeSat instead.
Ii used to live at loch Ness and the relay was Freeview light only, my current town apparently has a freeview lite relay but my Arial has always gone directly to rumster forest OR Orkney islands, both full service luckily (not used TV for 6 years though)
Could the reason for pointing to winter hill be that it offers more channels? Here in south wales, my local relay transmits only public service broadcasting, while the main transmitter (wenvoe) offers the commercial channels too.
As you said yourself it only transmits three of the six Freeview multiplexes, in common with most other relays. Given the duplication of the main channels in HD and SD the result is less than half the Freeview channel choice, and it also excludes the "hybrid" online channels and some radio stations. In analogue days there would have been no channel 5.
The only radio stations you will receive off a 3 MUX transmitter are the BBC ones. Any commercial radio stations require a 6 MUX transmitter. That said, if you want choice of radio stations, you'd probably be better off either using DAB or a smart speaker, since all of the BAUER stations (such as Absolute) are no longer on Freeview.
I've fitted quite a few Yagis in Shaw and Royton over the years since the Digital Switchover, and I think ive only ever had to swing one round Dog Hill. You could put a coat hanger up and get Winter Hill fairly reliably in most places round there
Should have called in for a brew Lewis, im only round the corner from Dog Hill! The reason more people are pointed toward Winter hill, is that Dog Hill only carries 3 Muxes, the same as the transmitter in Delph! There was a rush around the time of the Digital switch over, for people to want better tele from Winter hill, and people's antennas got span round and replaced for high gains and Masthead Amps.... A scam? Maybe a little at the time, but now its definately because people want as many channels as they can get!
In analogue days, many relays were built to overcome ghosting problems from a shielded main station. With digital, a reflected signal is unlikely to cause problems unless the main signal is very shielded. Therefore, people choose to use the main station, often with a taller mast and an amplifier so they can enjoy the extra programming provided over the relay station, which will likely only relay 3 out of the 6 multiplexes. My mother is in mid Wales and totally reliant on a relay station. When she visits us, she always complains about her deprivation compared with our choice of programming from Sutton Coldfield! So, to answer your headline, having your aerial pointing the wrong way (towards your local relay) will cost you….choice of programmes!
They're pointing their aerials at the main transmitter to recieve all the channels. Its a con that the relays only transmit 3 of the 6 muxes. Does it really cost anything extra to transmit the other 3 muxes. To me it seems like they're deliberately filtering the frequencies of the other 3 muxes. Whats in the transmitter building? A power supply, an RF filter, an amplifier and coax cable i would think? Obviously much higher quality than a consumer TV booster / amplifier but basically the same thing.
Now TV is digital and ghosting is a thing of the past using a 20+ element Yagi to receive a signal from a 500 KW transmitter on a tall tower on top of the highest hill in the area is probably overkill.
Yeah, a lot of the relays were probably there to prevent ghosting issues on the main transmitters in certain terrains. Nowadays you might as well got for a main transmitter (with a high gain aerial) rather than the easy route of using the repeater.
In Poland, we also have such supplementary lighting in places where something obstructs the main object; it's called SFN, and often it causes more problems than benefits. :)
In the 80's I had a Hi Gain Tv arial on a 30 foot mast with a rotator, from the Wirral coast I could receive Yorkshire TV, Anglia, ATV Midlands, S4C. This was handy as the ITV network would delay some programs by an hour or so allowing me to watch them again. I see some ridiculous kit put up because " you need a special arial for digital " ?.. 73's
Even in the analogue days many of my workmates "in the trade" preferred to have their TV aerials pointed at main transmitters not relays for more reliable service.
For analogue days of C1-C4 only it didn't really matter - just go for the strongest signal. When C5 was added you needed a main transmitter for C5. Then when Freeview was added you also needed a main transmitter. Nowadays with PSB vs PSB & COM you also need a main transmitter. Therefore nowadays just go for a main transmitter. If the aerial is on a repeater then it either predates C5 or you can't get a signal from any main transmitter or the installer is just lazy.
You don't need a high gain aerial with a tall pole and a masthead amplifier if you can see Dog Hill from your location, and therefore should have decent enough signals of Winter Hill. Also, the reason why people use Winter Hill is that it transmits all 6 multiplexes (7 if there is a local multiplex that is receivable), rather than just the 3 PSBs from the relay. If I had a choice of either an indoor aerial on a 3 MUX relay vs a substantial outdoor setup for a 6 MUX main transmitter, I would be going for the latter all day long.
It's probably just what happens a lot round here. I'm not sure of the current setup but certainly for many years it was just that you get more channels on the main TX so people only use the local relay if they can't "see" the main TX at their specific location.
I'm not sure that being able to see a local relay means you don't need a fancy aerial. Back in my student days, I lived about 1.5 miles away from the Plymouth Train Station relay. With a high gain aerial on the roof and an amplifier just about 3m of cable away (lucky my Saturday job was in an electronics shop) I could get adequate reception most of the time. Just adequate, with all that. I used to call the relay "A coat hanger and a PP3".
Now I've got to check what frequencies my gran's TV picks up. She lives at the bottom of a small hill and is completely shaded from the main broadcast tower for the region. Back in the analogue days, most of the homes in the area pointed towards the relay in the town, after DSO, most of the houses began pointing at Black Hill instead. Wonder if she still just picks up the relay from the back of the beam or whether she actually receives the frequencies coming from Black Hill.
Think you will find the digital signal is more receivable than the old analogue ones hence more pointing to winter now than there local relay the same has happened near me with only the lowest parts of the village using the relay everyone else is pointing at winter
I know this is gonna seem like small potatoes compared to some of whats discussed here, but damn if radio signals dont still boggle my mind, some wobbly lines flying through the air can let me see a video stream, i think is easy to take for granted just how epic that is 🔥
I didn't even bother getting an aerial installed when we moved into our New Build. All the channels I received are on the UA-cam Multiplex that, I assume, is piped through with the town gas.
This is funny, doing installation s of my TV antennas since 1961, when I had entered the radio-tv hobby, then shortwave, and by 1962, Amateur Radio, for almost 63 years since then. We had only over the air TV, analogue, until 1985, when we received a cable TV system installed, almost 40 years ago, which was a big improvement, with such an expansion such as CNN, MTV, etc I did have a simpler Cable TV system when I lived in upstate NY, about 50 miles from NYC, and many nearby houses had large fringe area TV antennas on 20 foot or higher masts with guy wires on the house roofs. I used to DX tv reception back to 60 years ago and take a BW Polaroid picture of screen ID,'s and send and receive TV and also FM station verification reports of tropo and skip reception out to 1000 miles to the south, West, Northwest to Canada too like Channel 2 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, from near, NYC, peaking in Summer, like on 6 meter Amateur Radio, for which I had confirmed over a 150 Maidenhead Grid Squares, with an ARRL, VUCC Certificate in the #1500 range. The best was US West coast, to Vancouver, BC, Costa Rica, Haiti..,and over to Europe 73 de W2CH, Ray, Peekskill, NY, moved to last week, 40 miles north of the new WTC, in Manhattan. 😊
3:40 - "But when you can see it, you really don't need big poles and masthead amplifiers for a relay nearly 18 miles away." I'm confused. The relay is 18 miles from where???
Question from across the pond..........is there ghosting on many of the receivers being they are all on the same frequency? Or does digital fight against it by locking on one signal only?
Aerial tv antennas? In 2024? I thought they had long gone the way of vinyl LPs and cathode-ray tube televisions. I mean, these days even home satellite dishes are considered yesterday's hardware. I haven't seen a functioning aerial tv roof antenna in at least 30 years.
Haven't you heard the news? Vinyl LPs never really went away, and have come back to the fore with a vengeance. However, why compact cassettes are still a thing when there are no quality decks being produced any longer, is something that I don't understand.
Very interesting. I also assume with the advent of digital TV there is better coverage in those areas from Winter Hill. Used to live in Bunbury S Cheshire with an excellent signal of the analogue transmissions then. Love the Radio and TV masts. Thank you.
Mast head amplifiers are only best used to overcome the losses in long antenna feeders, to detract the feeder loss from increasing the noise floor of a bad signal in the first place, but they often have a very wide frequency response (ie 88 - 1000 mhZ) so yes they will bring in all the local rf as tv antennas are usually widebanded and not so resonant, just to flattern the television front end and cause more problems , so the tv aerial fitters must do a good deal in filters also to add to there wages. 😁😁😁
at least if it is a wideband amplifier, it will also amplify FM & DAB if you decide to combine those signals in sometime later down the line. When Virgin TV left us some spare splitters they provided, they said they couldn't be used for TV signals, just their own source... but the splitter says 5-1000MHz so not only would it pass UHF TV, but also VHF DAB & FM!
I was wondering why the Aerials are twisted 90' to each other (spikes out sideward or spikes out top to bottom), I remember back in the Astra TV days horizontal and vertical on the LMB but never seen it on a TV aerial ?
3:15 Those dangling coaxial cables will not last for long, apart from the fact that the aerials are looking to a direction where -at best- some refracted signals will be received. Shame on those greedy installers. And.... DVB-T signals have switched to vertical polarisation. Another source of 20+ dB signal loss for those unsuspecting cash-spending people.
DVB-T is vertical polarity for the repeater mast (Dog Hill), yes - but Winter Hill is still horizontal polarity. So the horizontal aerials will be correct for those receiving Winter Hill.
I haven't had an actual TV set for well over a decade, or a subscription to a dedicated broadcast content provider for over 7 years, and the only thing I watch any video content on is on this spam pig known as UA-cam. Otherwise, I'm more often listening to terrestrial radio or music podcasts/archived radio programs from public or university-affiliated stations.
@@SillieWous We switched off analogue TV in the UK between 2008 and 2012. The NW region was one of the first to switch over to digital only. The future trend will be to move more to IP based delivery.
There isn't. Terrestrial TV transmitters switched over to digital years ago to make way for 4G. A few people still use antennas especially those that might have TVs in bedrooms etc because cable and sattelite companies charge extra for multi room services however people are abandoning them for streaming services but terrestrial doesn't hog your internet bandwidth and it's free bar the TV licence but you have to have that no matter what if you want to watch any form of live broadcast television no matter how you get it.
Please read before commenting:
I’m not saying all aerial guys are scamming the entire town. I’m just discussing a discussion I had with 2 friends who are in the trade. They told me it goes on a lot.
Of course it does. Anywhere that 'experts' can use their 'expertise' that your average member of the public doesn't know jack about will have a (significant) fraction of those 'experts' be basically conmen. See also: Car technicians.
The problem with Dog Hill is it is a Freeview light so only carries 3 multiplexes as you say rather than the 7 Multiplexes which Winter Hill carries so it would be natural to try and receive the full lineup of channels which would be why installers recommend the extra cost / effort.
As for Masthead amplifiers, I used to do extensive testing on mastheads for our installtions as often we would be looking into 700 & 800 MHz 4G transmitters (typically a 12sector site) and I wouldl say that most of the main manufactures make very good mastheads with great filtering which don't bring in any out of band signals.
However I would agree there are a breed of national aerial installers (They used to advertise in the Sun) in the UK who are taught how to upsell / scam customers and lack any technical knowledge so just keep trying things till it works.
Freeview will work down to -32bd which it was never designed for so there is a good chance the 10 element aerials are still working. As a comparison analogue TV needed around 77db for a fully Q5 picture. Also Freeview works well with multi path signals as it can add numerous mutlipath signals together along with it error corrections it is a pretty robust system.
Down here in Kent I discovered a Freeview light TX (Gillingham Testing Centre) which rebroadcasts on the same frequency as the main TX (Bluebell Hill) using SFN (Single Frequency Network Tech) I've never seen another one elsewhere in the UK.
Sorry to ramble but an interesting video :)
More often than not, they don't bother to use a signal strength meter and just aim it the same way as the others,
@@MrKnowwun When I first started installing TV aerials (42yrs ago) it blew my mind that they just copied what was already there and were stuffed if it didn't work.
I had always assumed people often try to avoid relays because they carry less channels/muxes.
I remember back in the old analogue days trying very hard to pick up a signal from winter hill just to receive the new fangled channel 5 when we had a repeater only a few miles away.
I'm pretty sure that DTV wasn't available on local repeaters in the early days too.
Dog hill does not carry all of the multiplexes, In fact it has a paltry selection of channels. if you want the full range of channels you need winter hill. Much experience here when caravanning of ignoring the local relay, and aiming for the high power main site with all the multiplexes, and channels with my directional antenna.
This is what I suspected. Relays don't have the same range as the main.
We live about 1.5 miles from Blackhill Tx. We have a small stub of coax hanging out the back of the telly with about 3 inches of the screen stripped back. Works a treat, never any issues. 😂😂😂
Superb. I wonder what the field strength is
In strong signal areas it's perfectly feasible to just get a signal from a piece of wire.
That reminds me, in an area that had good Waltham line of sight, post DSO, despite Waltham being about 30 miles or so away, I was able to get the digital signals (including the COMs) off a T-type indoor wire aerial propped near the window. Sandy Heath, despite being over 10 miles closer, would not get anything on any indoor aerial and you'd need a rooftop or loft aerial.
At first, I thought you meant a town in Texas (TX) called Blackhill, and wondered what kind of Texan calls a TV a "telly", then I realized you meant Tx to mean "transmitter".
@@RCAvhstape Scotland.
Some of the relay stations don't carry all 6 free view multiplexes. if you want all of the free view channels then you need to go to the master transmitter ( winter hill in this case). We have that issue down here. Stockland all 6 most relays only 3 or 4 matrixes.
Where I live is on a relay, most aerials are pointing at the relay but a few people are pointing at the main mast, the relay doesn't carry all services so I always assumed people pointed at the main mast to get all the muxes. That said a lot of antennas are the wrong polarisation
Which makes absolutely no sense because the benefits of a stronger signal from the relay are wiped out by the incorrect polarity!
Meaning you might as well have gone for the horizontally polarized main transmitter...
Well done Lewis!
On your opening shot, I thought the aerials pointing down were for picking up underground TV stations! 🙂
One problem is that relays like Dog Hill usually only carry three muxes whereas Winter Hill carries all of them. Some people are disappointed if they don't get ALL of the channels.
That reminds me, I need to get the local aerials guy out to mine. The reflector has detached and is swinging in the breeze. Not a huge priority as we tend to use FreeSat instead.
I'd be disappointed if I got _any_ of the channels.
Ii used to live at loch Ness and the relay was Freeview light only, my current town apparently has a freeview lite relay but my Arial has always gone directly to rumster forest OR Orkney islands, both full service luckily (not used TV for 6 years though)
Could the reason for pointing to winter hill be that it offers more channels?
Here in south wales, my local relay transmits only public service broadcasting, while the main transmitter (wenvoe) offers the commercial channels too.
I have a high gain aerial pointing at Wenvoe, which means I get nearly 200 channels vs around 30 on the crappy local relay.
As you said yourself it only transmits three of the six Freeview multiplexes, in common with most other relays. Given the duplication of the main channels in HD and SD the result is less than half the Freeview channel choice, and it also excludes the "hybrid" online channels and some radio stations.
In analogue days there would have been no channel 5.
The only radio stations you will receive off a 3 MUX transmitter are the BBC ones. Any commercial radio stations require a 6 MUX transmitter.
That said, if you want choice of radio stations, you'd probably be better off either using DAB or a smart speaker, since all of the BAUER stations (such as Absolute) are no longer on Freeview.
I've fitted quite a few Yagis in Shaw and Royton over the years since the Digital Switchover, and I think ive only ever had to swing one round Dog Hill. You could put a coat hanger up and get Winter Hill fairly reliably in most places round there
Should have called in for a brew Lewis, im only round the corner from Dog Hill! The reason more people are pointed toward Winter hill, is that Dog Hill only carries 3 Muxes, the same as the transmitter in Delph! There was a rush around the time of the Digital switch over, for people to want better tele from Winter hill, and people's antennas got span round and replaced for high gains and Masthead Amps.... A scam? Maybe a little at the time, but now its definately because people want as many channels as they can get!
In analogue days, many relays were built to overcome ghosting problems from a shielded main station. With digital, a reflected signal is unlikely to cause problems unless the main signal is very shielded. Therefore, people choose to use the main station, often with a taller mast and an amplifier so they can enjoy the extra programming provided over the relay station, which will likely only relay 3 out of the 6 multiplexes. My mother is in mid Wales and totally reliant on a relay station. When she visits us, she always complains about her deprivation compared with our choice of programming from Sutton Coldfield! So, to answer your headline, having your aerial pointing the wrong way (towards your local relay) will cost you….choice of programmes!
Looks like a hodge-podge of both horizontal and vertical polarization as well...
@@Orvulum it's a way of sheilding them from each other. The main transmitter is horizontal and the relays vertical generally round here
They're pointing their aerials at the main transmitter to recieve all the channels. Its a con that the relays only transmit 3 of the 6 muxes. Does it really cost anything extra to transmit the other 3 muxes. To me it seems like they're deliberately filtering the frequencies of the other 3 muxes.
Whats in the transmitter building? A power supply, an RF filter, an amplifier and coax cable i would think? Obviously much higher quality than a consumer TV booster / amplifier but basically the same thing.
Now TV is digital and ghosting is a thing of the past using a 20+ element Yagi to receive a signal from a 500 KW transmitter on a tall tower on top of the highest hill in the area is probably overkill.
Yeah, a lot of the relays were probably there to prevent ghosting issues on the main transmitters in certain terrains. Nowadays you might as well got for a main transmitter (with a high gain aerial) rather than the easy route of using the repeater.
In Poland, we also have such supplementary lighting in places where something obstructs the main object; it's called SFN, and often it causes more problems than benefits. :)
Dog Hill is a so-called "Freeview Lite" transmitter so that most likely explains why installers would ignore it and go for Winter Hill instead.
In the 80's I had a Hi Gain Tv arial on a 30 foot mast with a rotator, from the Wirral coast I could receive Yorkshire TV, Anglia, ATV Midlands, S4C. This was handy as the ITV network would delay some programs by an hour or so allowing me to watch them again. I see some ridiculous kit put up because " you need a special arial for digital " ?.. 73's
We lived in a YTV area but could get winter hill from a separate antenna in the loft with a signal amplifier. Often they had different programmes!
@@CarolineFord1 It was a useful time shift YTV put out a good signal to the Wirral.
@@WOFFY-qc9te my father's motivation was that sometimes Granada showed cricket, and YTV showed a crap movie.
Even in the analogue days many of my workmates "in the trade" preferred to have their TV aerials pointed at main transmitters not relays for more reliable service.
For analogue days of C1-C4 only it didn't really matter - just go for the strongest signal.
When C5 was added you needed a main transmitter for C5.
Then when Freeview was added you also needed a main transmitter.
Nowadays with PSB vs PSB & COM you also need a main transmitter.
Therefore nowadays just go for a main transmitter.
If the aerial is on a repeater then it either predates C5 or you can't get a signal from any main transmitter or the installer is just lazy.
@@TheSpotify95 relays go off the air a lot more than main sites.... so that was the criteria at the time...
You don't need a high gain aerial with a tall pole and a masthead amplifier if you can see Dog Hill from your location, and therefore should have decent enough signals of Winter Hill.
Also, the reason why people use Winter Hill is that it transmits all 6 multiplexes (7 if there is a local multiplex that is receivable), rather than just the 3 PSBs from the relay.
If I had a choice of either an indoor aerial on a 3 MUX relay vs a substantial outdoor setup for a 6 MUX main transmitter, I would be going for the latter all day long.
It's probably just what happens a lot round here. I'm not sure of the current setup but certainly for many years it was just that you get more channels on the main TX so people only use the local relay if they can't "see" the main TX at their specific location.
I'm not sure that being able to see a local relay means you don't need a fancy aerial. Back in my student days, I lived about 1.5 miles away from the Plymouth Train Station relay. With a high gain aerial on the roof and an amplifier just about 3m of cable away (lucky my Saturday job was in an electronics shop) I could get adequate reception most of the time. Just adequate, with all that. I used to call the relay "A coat hanger and a PP3".
Now I've got to check what frequencies my gran's TV picks up. She lives at the bottom of a small hill and is completely shaded from the main broadcast tower for the region. Back in the analogue days, most of the homes in the area pointed towards the relay in the town, after DSO, most of the houses began pointing at Black Hill instead. Wonder if she still just picks up the relay from the back of the beam or whether she actually receives the frequencies coming from Black Hill.
Think you will find the digital signal is more receivable than the old analogue ones hence more pointing to winter now than there local relay the same has happened near me with only the lowest parts of the village using the relay everyone else is pointing at winter
Unless you are addicted to watching That's TV or Judge Judy, no need for Winter Hill 😂
I love the attempt to touch base with the obvious radio amateur showing up in your clip :)
I know this is gonna seem like small potatoes compared to some of whats discussed here, but damn if radio signals dont still boggle my mind, some wobbly lines flying through the air can let me see a video stream, i think is easy to take for granted just how epic that is 🔥
Thank You Luis! Great content and a great observation!
I didn't even bother getting an aerial installed when we moved into our New Build. All the channels I received are on the UA-cam Multiplex that, I assume, is piped through with the town gas.
I filmed near a new build estate last year and there wasn’t a single antenna. I guess the ones that had them put them in the loft
On my five year old estate there is a covenant in the deeds that’s says no outdoor aerials are allowed.
Interesting Paul
@@RingwayManchester they normally prewire them for mounting in the loft space - I haven't bothered
@@RingwayManchester the deeds ban external aerials and satellite dishes, but they do run cable to the loftspace
This is funny, doing installation s of my TV antennas since 1961, when I had entered the
radio-tv hobby, then shortwave, and by 1962, Amateur Radio, for almost 63 years since then.
We had only over the air TV,
analogue, until 1985, when we
received a cable TV system installed, almost 40 years ago,
which was a big improvement,
with such an expansion such
as CNN, MTV, etc
I did have a simpler Cable TV
system when I lived in upstate
NY, about 50 miles from NYC,
and many nearby houses had
large fringe area TV antennas
on 20 foot or higher masts with guy wires on the house
roofs.
I used to DX tv reception back
to 60 years ago and take a BW
Polaroid picture of screen ID,'s
and send and receive TV and
also FM station verification
reports of tropo and skip
reception out to 1000 miles
to the south, West, Northwest
to Canada too like Channel 2
in Thunder Bay, Ontario, from
near, NYC, peaking in Summer,
like on 6 meter Amateur Radio,
for which I had confirmed over
a 150 Maidenhead Grid Squares, with an ARRL, VUCC
Certificate in the #1500 range.
The best was US West coast,
to Vancouver, BC, Costa Rica,
Haiti..,and over to Europe
73 de W2CH, Ray, Peekskill,
NY, moved to last week, 40 miles north of the new WTC,
in Manhattan. 😊
3:40 - "But when you can see it, you really don't need big poles and masthead amplifiers for a relay nearly 18 miles away."
I'm confused. The relay is 18 miles from where???
18 miles from Winter Hill I assume.
Question from across the pond..........is there ghosting on many of the receivers being they are all on the same frequency? Or does digital fight against it by locking on one signal only?
I had to put my old dog to sleep last week... thanks for the reminder
Don’t say that 😂
@@RingwayManchester It's true and I'm not laughing.
Would be awesome for you to document this stuff over in Ireland as another perspective. Keep up the great content
Barclay James Harvest country!
Aerial tv antennas? In 2024? I thought they had long gone the way of vinyl LPs and cathode-ray tube televisions. I mean, these days even home satellite dishes are considered yesterday's hardware. I haven't seen a functioning aerial tv roof antenna in at least 30 years.
Haven't you heard the news? Vinyl LPs never really went away, and have come back to the fore with a vengeance. However, why compact cassettes are still a thing when there are no quality decks being produced any longer, is something that I don't understand.
Very interesting. I also assume with the advent of digital TV there is better coverage in those areas from Winter Hill. Used to live in Bunbury S Cheshire with an excellent signal of the analogue transmissions then. Love the Radio and TV masts. Thank you.
Thanks for the info
Interesting as usual mate 😊
Mast head amplifiers are only best used to overcome the losses in long antenna feeders, to detract the feeder loss from increasing the noise floor of a bad signal in the first place, but they often have a very wide frequency response (ie 88 - 1000 mhZ) so yes they will bring in all the local rf as tv antennas are usually widebanded and not so resonant, just to flattern the television front end and cause more problems , so the tv aerial fitters must do a good deal in filters also to add to there wages. 😁😁😁
at least if it is a wideband amplifier, it will also amplify FM & DAB if you decide to combine those signals in sometime later down the line.
When Virgin TV left us some spare splitters they provided, they said they couldn't be used for TV signals, just their own source... but the splitter says 5-1000MHz so not only would it pass UHF TV, but also VHF DAB & FM!
I was wondering why the Aerials are twisted 90' to each other (spikes out sideward or spikes out top to bottom), I remember back in the Astra TV days horizontal and vertical on the LMB but never seen it on a TV aerial ?
@@TurboTimsWorld the transmitters are polarised, winter Hill transmits horizontal
@@Fr.FintanStack I think most (all?) relays are vertical
Does Dog Hill output all the digital channels, not just the main ones?
3 mux’s so most but not all
I seen that too, it’s stinking. 😂😂😂
I’m surprised anyone watches TV through an aerial these days. I’ve not watched TV for years. Waste of money and pointless and boring
I love your videos 😊
Hands up if you thought this was going to be about East Germany🤚
3:15 Those dangling coaxial cables will not last for long, apart from the fact that the aerials are looking to a direction where -at best- some refracted signals will be received. Shame on those greedy installers. And.... DVB-T signals have switched to vertical polarisation. Another source of 20+ dB signal loss for those unsuspecting cash-spending people.
DVB-T is vertical polarity for the repeater mast (Dog Hill), yes - but Winter Hill is still horizontal polarity. So the horizontal aerials will be correct for those receiving Winter Hill.
Does anyone still watch mainstream TV ?
I haven't had an actual TV set for well over a decade, or a subscription to a dedicated broadcast content provider for over 7 years, and the only thing I watch any video content on is on this spam pig known as UA-cam. Otherwise, I'm more often listening to terrestrial radio or music podcasts/archived radio programs from public or university-affiliated stations.
GREAT
Woah
It amazes me that there still is analog TV in the UK. I haven’t seen an antenna on the roof in the NL in over 15 years.
@@SillieWous We switched off analogue TV in the UK between 2008 and 2012. The NW region was one of the first to switch over to digital only.
The future trend will be to move more to IP based delivery.
There isn't. Terrestrial TV transmitters switched over to digital years ago to make way for 4G. A few people still use antennas especially those that might have TVs in bedrooms etc because cable and sattelite companies charge extra for multi room services however people are abandoning them for streaming services but terrestrial doesn't hog your internet bandwidth and it's free bar the TV licence but you have to have that no matter what if you want to watch any form of live broadcast television no matter how you get it.