With the digital switchover, more and more people are going to want to install Freeview. Since I have previously posted questions on the subject here and received many helpful suggestions, I am starting this thread for the benefit of any others who may be looking for information as I was.

We live on a farm in the Raukawa Range about 20 km from Hastings. The transmitters are on Mt. Erin near Havelock North, at a straight line distance of 18 km. A big hilltop not far away and some trees closer by block our line of sight to the transmission mast. In spite of this, I was hoping to be able to receive the high definition Freeview signal on UHF.

I have no special knowledge in this area and also no special equipment for measuring signal strength or pinpointing the location of the transmitter. I think this makes me an average person in this respect, so maybe my experience is useful for other average people looking for tips.

After doing a little general aerial research, I decided on an inexpensive triple boom design in the first instance. Because I didn’t really know what I was doing, I didn’t want to invest too much initially but I had to start somewhere and this aerial was touted as being a high gain solution (16 db claimed) for fringe reception areas. As a high definition receiver I chose an Orton 7000PVR from Trade Me.

Since all our region’s transmitters are located on Mt. Erin, I used the analogue transmissions of Prime and Maori TV as an initial guide. Digital tends to be all or nothing and unsurprisingly, I was unable to get a lock on anything with the aerial set up temporarily indoors. However, I was able to manually tune our old analogue TV to the Prime frequency even though the signal was almost non-existent, and by playing with the aerial, I was able to receive a very snowy monochrome image that was identifiable as Prime (Channel 61, by the way). This verified the best signal direction. I then tried the aerial on the veranda but it didn’t seem to make much of an improvement.

Our farmhouse has two storeys so the next test was with the aerial on the upstairs veranda. With this we were able to receive a distorted but almost watchable Maori TV signal, in colour and with sound. Still nothing at all on the digital tuner.

The next step was to temporarily lash the aerial to an unused chimney on a mast about five meters above the roof. Like magic the Freeview tuner came to life, locking in on all 18 available TV stations, as well as three digital radio ones. However, I soon realized that only the first eight were of good quality, with stable reception. According to the signal strength meter on the tuner, these are coming in at between 60% and 80%. These would be the stations on transmission channels 27 (DA) and 31 (DB), operated by TVNZ and Mediaworks. The upper eight stations, on channel 43 (DC Kordia), are badly pixilated, often drop out, and seem to disappear completely when the sun goes down. The radio stations are also no good. Today, which is overcast verging on rain, the Mediaworks stations are also pixilating a little. Yesterday, when it was sunny and clear, they were perfect.

I am actually fairly tickled with this result. It is much better than I dared hope. Even at its present height, the aerial is a long way from line of sight to the transmitter. It is still blocked by a big hilltop and trees. Yet our reception of the first eight stations appears to be almost perfect, at least on the analogue set. (There may be slight ghosting, but I am using the composite input so can’t be sure).

And that is with 10 meters of junk coax I happened to have lying around. I am now waiting on my order of RG6 so I can hook up the HDMI downstairs and see what the reception really looks like, though this will at least double the length of the coax so I don’t know if there will be any improvement. The point of all this being, I guess, is don’t despair if nothing works at first. Especially with digital, a little extra height can make all the difference, even when you don’t have line of sight.

Once we have the good coax, the next step will be to permanently install the aerial on a slightly higher mast. I’m hoping a couple more meters will do the trick for the weaker stations, which are right on the edge of being receivable. If not, the next step may be a higher quality aerial, though this one seems pretty good, and as a final touch, maybe a masthead amplifier.

As far as the tuner goes, I wanted something that could receive high definition but wouldn’t cost much until I knew whether we could make it work. The Orton seems pretty good so far, though one of the analogue audio channels appears to be faulty and only produces a loud buzz (I checked the cable and it’s not that). For us this is not a huge problem as we will be using the digital coax connection (already checked and verified) but it does call into question the quality of the rest of the unit. Other than that, the only issue so far is the EPG, which really does suck. Since this is a non-approved unit, I didn’t expect the programme guide to work seven days ahead, as advertised, but it doesn’t even work one day! Instead, all we get is the current program and the next one. This device does have a record function via USB, but if recording is actually important to anyone, the EPG would be a huge issue.

The USB also seems pretty touchy. It only worked intermittently with one of my flash drives and not at all with another, though it didn’t have any problem with a third. For some reason this seems to be a common issue with many comparable tuners, so I don’t think it is specific to Orton. At this point, everything else seems acceptable. I will post an update if and when that is merited. In the meantime, I hope this long tale is of use to someone.