Thread: Digital TV antenna

Hello B92 8NW try this link to Hills antenna for available antenna types.



Hills Antenna & TV Systems - Product Category

Hills have been around for a long time, give them a ring / email and they should be able to set you straight, I've found tehm helful in the past.

Regards, George.

Originally Posted by B92 8NW

I've been told areas of Shepparton VIC need a Dual System Polarisation antenna to receive full Digital broadcast. I would assume I fall into this category. What is a Dual System Polarisation antenna?

Does that simply mean that the UHF and VHF are in different polarities... ie vertical and horizontal?

How do you know which of the many types you need for your area? The digital tv website doesnt advise this by location.

I'd say like many country areas the VHF channels are Vertically polarised whereas the UHF will be Horizontal. This was the case before digital broadcast started, when SBS started to go out into the country many people had a second antenna installed for the UHF. Then they had a switch around the back of the TV that they switched over with, these days people usually have a combiner or just get an antenna with one boom to hold both the VHF and UHF elements. When people talk about digital tv antennas they are usually referring to a UHF antenna.

Go to Dick Smith and have a chat with them. I have one for less than $300.00

It looks like Hills make the correct type one that I need. Theres a guy in QLD that sells them on Ebay and fits them up with the cabling and F connectors to measure. I told him it was the Goulburn Valley transmitter, the distance and bearing I was from it and what he came up with seemed to match my research .

What threw me is that the neighbours have just put one up and it looks like a full scale replica of the Duga-3 array. Personally hadn't seen anything like that.

I think you could get a lot better performance from a yagi type antenna with a few directors. I think that thing that you have put up might have a good null towards the back but at best it has 12 db gain and more likely 9 db. A good yagi will get you 15 db. The difference is one has a bigger foot print in the vertical vs the other having a bigger footprint in the horizontal plane.

I think that thing looks pretty ugly and an eye sore, but then again you will not have to worry about magpies and cockatoos sitting on the end of the boom and bending your antenna.

Hi B92 8NW,

According to the information I have your channel allocation and polarisation are as follows

Digital 9, 36, 37, 42, 45
Analogue 6, 34, 40, 43, 46

(VHF Vertical, UHF Horizontal)

Not sure if they've switched off analogue up your way yet but you've still got a single VHF channel on DTB anyway.

Matchmaster (I have no affiliation just used them a lot in houses I've lived in) have a couple of antennas that would suit.

01MM-DC15

01MM-LP03FHV


The first can be set up with the same or mixed polarity and the second is a fixed cross polarity.

Check out the Matchmaster website. I think they have an antenna selector there.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Iain

As a general rule, if you get good analogue reception, you should get good digital reception, and should not need a new antenna. Problem is, with digital you get either good reception or none, whereas with analogue it degrades gracefully, and what you have been used to may not be up to what digital needs.

I found that when I built the house I had been sold the wrong VHF antenna - it was horizontally polarised not vertically, and while it worked well enough for analogue, it was not up to digital. Replaced it with a vertically polarised one, now get good digital reception, except when there is heavy rain between us and the transmitter, about 100km away. I plan to raise the antenna a bit to try and help this, but it works most of the time!

John

Originally Posted by JDNSW

As a general rule, if you get good analogue reception, you should get good digital reception, and should not need a new antenna. Problem is, with digital you get either good reception or none, whereas with analogue it degrades gracefully, and what you have been used to may not be up to what digital needs.

I found that when I built the house I had been sold the wrong VHF antenna - it was horizontally polarised not vertically, and while it worked well enough for analogue, it was not up to digital. Replaced it with a vertically polarised one, now get good digital reception, except when there is heavy rain between us and the transmitter, about 100km away. I plan to raise the antenna a bit to try and help this, but it works most of the time!

John

John, have you looked into getting a VAST receiver ?
MySatTV

We're only 8-10km from the terrestrial transmitter that's 500m above us, (direct line of sight) but it's only milliwatts so the analogue picture quality is worse than awful for our neighbours.

We already have an Aurora satellite setup from when we were on the farm 20km east into the hills from here and the only time time the signal drops out is during a thunder storm.
Not sure if the powers that be will grant us a VAST license, they appear to be a lot tougher on issuing smart cards for them than the old Aurora system but anyone about 2km from us here (closer to the mountain) are in a broadcast shadow and can't get terrestrial TV at all, so I'm going to give it a go.