About a week after moving into my current place I had Sky fitted and haven't used the chimney mounted terrestrial aerial since. This morning I had that aerial which was pointing at the Hannington transmitter swapped out for a larger higher gain aerial pointing at the more powerful Crystal Palace transmitter. The reason for doing this is that I've been looking at ways to have TV in more places around the house and have come to the conclusion that the most straightforward, cheapest way of piping good quality TV around the house is to have a Freeview box connected to each TV. There are some really good open source solutions around like MythTV but going down this road means you have to have a PC connected to each TV. But a Freeview box just works! If it has a paddy, turn it off and back on again and it'll work! Much easier, quieter, cooler and a heck of a lot cheaper!!
At the moment the aerial box is terminating in the attic where I've got a 4 way distribution amp. The next step is to run the coax down into the bedrooms and put a proper aerial point in the kitchen, probably fronted with 'decombiner' sockets so that I can put the UHF, FM and DAB signals down the same piece of coax.
Been looking at Freeview boxes too. There are five options.
- Cheap Freeview boxes like the Tesco Value one at about £25.
- More expensive boxes like the Humax and Thompson boxes that are reputed to have better quality tuners which are recommended for the area where I live (about £60).
- Get a 'PVR' type Freeview box that has two tuners and a harddrive inside to create a Sky+ type experience. The boxes are about £200 and the people I know who have them reckon they are great.
- Get a TopUpTV PVR. 200 quid like the option above but with the added expense of a £9.99 monthly subscription fee to have a few more channels.
- Get new tellies with DVB tuners built in. My housemate says that his DVB picture is awesome through the built-in tuner in his plasma.
Apologies for the lack of links :)
