http://freeviewnz.tv/images/auckland.pdf
I've got a UHF antenna but I'm getting artefacts on DVB-T. The house has a hill on the side the antenna is pointing towards (Waiatarua). i.e if was to look down the length of the antenna I would see houses up on the hill.
I looked at the antenna today; it's pretty rusty especially the mesh guard at the back. The contacts were pretty corroded, so I cleaned them up. There was also a masthead amp which I've taken out while trouble shooting. I'm still getting problems with reception even though the signal is reported by my PCI card as 100% quality.
The cable comes down off the roof and up under the floor behind the TV then there is a run of about 3 meters in parallel with network, DVI, satellite cables etc (no mains), the cables are all bound with that spiral cable tidy stuff. The cable then goes in to a splitter 1 side goes to PC1 with a DVB-T card the other side goes to PC2 with a analog capture card.
Now for the questions:
1.Since my antenna is about 20 years old and rusty and basically falling apart, I'm going to replace it. Given my location what is my best bet? should I go with a high gain 91 element jobby to combat the fact that I've got the hill "in the way"?
2.Am I better off without the masthead amp? It was in the house when I moved in, It's one with a power feeder at the TV end, I've always used it with analog (Prime); the picture is pretty good.
3.Can running all these cables parallel bound together cause interference?
4.Could the splitter with the 2 PCs be causing a problem. (I will try without the splitter, I just need to change some plugs.)
It seems that most of the time the picture is perfect, sometimes it will be perfect for 1/2 an hour at a time then there will be some disruption; it seems quite random, but it's by no means constant disruption.
Any help would be much appreciated. :D
Trusted
