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    Default help phil diy tv

    im tired of paying these local tv guys 100's for half jobs they never get right on my fta at home

    the last guy, said bla bla & put up a new but small phased array antenna to point at gan gan hill (nelson bay 2315)
    but he stole my mast head amp in the process, said i didnt need it, but now i get pixelation on & off on certain outlets

    so, if i stick up a cheap amp, it may help?
    https://www.facebook.com/philquad68



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    It's a tough call, Phil.

    Has it been an ongoing issue with reliable reception?

    What's the terrain like between your antenna and Gan Gan Hill?

    Why the last change of antenna?

    Are you able to post up some signal measurements of each channel?

    If you have crappy signal quality at the antenna, adding an amp usually doesn't help.... so knowing what signal strength & quality you are currently getting will help provide an 'educated guess'.

    How many TV outlets in the house (including any unused at present)?

    The amp in your link is wideband... including VHF Bands 1 & 3 + FM.

    The translators on Gan Gan Hill are only 600 watts (vertically polarised) all UHF band 4, so if you do need a MH amp, a UHF-Only model (with LTE filtering) would be best.

    I can help with more info if you can provide answers to the questions above.

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    ok, more info

    the oldie was pointed at sugarloaf, so i guess they thought nbay was a better option, about 10km, not many hills
    about 6 outlets, mostly 2-3 in use at same time
    only 2 that seem to suffer as far as pixelate? & you got that quelch type noise, my bedroom tv is worst, mainly like 7,9,10,gem, but i only fta around 7.30-8.30 pm to see if its worthy (not normally)

    now it is a loop system that myself & the good ol fernbay created, so its antenna to foxbox, then back up to splitter, unless these new guys worked it different.

    i had a inline amp after the foxbox to boost it before, think they disconnected it, ill try it 1st i suppose

    ( ill see if i can get signal measurement)
    https://www.facebook.com/philquad68

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    kitchen tv

    seems most-all channels say quality 99, strength 91 ? some hd have sound, no pics, but sbs hd does.
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    The fox loop is possibly an issue....especially without the amp and with 6 outlets. (It doesn't matter how many are in use at any given time, if they are all connected to a splitter, the signal is divided up between them)

    Does the antenna go to a splitter first before the fox box, or does it all have to go through the fox box first.

    Eg: If you disconnect the FTA antenna from the fox box, do you still get signal to other outlets in the house?

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    thats a good question, ill try that

    i dont need perfect, but stable helps

    whats the 91 for signal mean? a bigger ant may have helped?
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    The signal figures you get from a domestic tuner are only indicative.

    They are not an accurate measurement that a professional signal instrument will provide, but they give you a bit of an idea.

    Certainly something like 91 (%) is a good indication, but it's the signal 'quality' that is the crucial thing, as it relates to the Bit Error Ratio (BER) which is errors in the data stream.

    High figures of signal quality 'should' equate to stable reception, but sudden drops of signal quality will cause pixelation.

    Too much signal level is as bad as not enough signal level as it causes data errors due to tuner overload.

    It's a real balancing act to ensure all outlets are receiving signal strength and quality within an 'operating window' of suitable levels.

    Mixing a Foxtel output RF signal with off air FTA signals is tricky.

    The best way to do it in your case would be fox box HDMI into a digital modulator, which converts it to a DVB-T signal, the same as your digital FTA signals, then combining them.

    It's not cheap to do that though, so if you want to mix the RF out of the fox box as analogue, the best result would be a UHF masthead amp that has separate band 4 and band 5 inputs.

    Band 4 covers your FTA signals, and you can set the fox box modulated output channel somewhere in band 5.

    The amp mixes them together and then they are split to all your outlets.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mtv View Post
    The amp in your link is wideband... including VHF Bands 1 & 3 + FM.
    I took this from the posted link...... I don't agree.



    Looks similar to the antsig one Bunnings sell.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Antennaman View Post
    I took this from the posted link...... I don't agree.
    The labels in the pic show VHF is 47-230MHz and UHF is 520-694MHz.

    That covers Bands 1/3/FM/4/5... how is that not wideband?

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    Quote Originally Posted by mtv View Post
    The labels in the pic show VHF is 47-230MHz and UHF is 520-694MHz.

    That covers Bands 1/3/FM/4/5... how is that not wideband?
    Moot point, limited wideband from my perspective, I'm thinking old school where UHF went to 820MHz

    Gan Gan is channel 28-33 UHF, if I was using this amplifier, the antenna connection would be made to the UHF input of the amplifier which is limited to Australian digital TV channel frequencies, to overcome LTE interference etc.

    Moving right along:

    If the signal from Phil's antenna good enough in terms of strength & quality, which, as mentioned, could only be determined by the right test equipment, I'd be feeding the antenna signal direct into the fox box via a band pass filter such as to eliminate all but the required frequencies for digital channels.

    I'd then take the output from the box & amplify it sufficiently before feeding it to the splitter to overcome the loss of the splitter & cabling to give a good analogue picture on the TVs of interest, since the modulated analogue output of the box would usually only be sufficient for one, or maybe 2 TVs, before the analogue picture quality deteriorates. The output modulated channel of the fox box should be well away from the digital channels of interest - and this is assuming there is no fault with the box/cabling/connections to start with.

    Analogue pictures on smaller TVs, with my eyes, & in my opinion, don't seem much worse than some of the bit starved digital channels on offer.

    Quote Originally Posted by Philquad View Post
    some hd have sound, no pics, but sbs hd does.
    Some HD & SD channels are transmitted in MPEG4 encoding, (SBS HD isnt - yet) unless you have a TV capable of decoding these channels, you won't get a picture. TV's sold now should be able to do this.

    If you do go down the path of using a HDMI modulator, you would need to ensure it does not encode in MPEG4, as many of these now do, & that it is also HDCP compliant for your foxtel box.
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    i want my old uhf back lol
    after testing 2 of the tv's that show the signal ect (mine doesnt)

    i think its mainly just my tv which is the only 1 that needs the loop so as i can watch the fox in a 2nd room

    will see if i can get someone to plug the old inline amp in.

    ps. i think they did some filter thing for it when they where working out my loop
    https://www.facebook.com/philquad68

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