New house, please help!!

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bellyfrog

99 posts

Master Geek

#82345 27-Apr-2011 16:29

Ok, so I just moved into a new house. We also just bought a new TV (sony ex400) which has freeview built in.

On the roof there are 2 aerials and 1 sky dish. There are 4 cables coming up into the living room (I assume 2 from the sky dish?), but on none of them can we get any freeview signal. We can get analogue signal from one of them.

Since there are 2 aerials on the roof and one is new-looking I am guessing one of them is UHF, can't be sure need to talk to the landlord though.

However since there is a sky dish on the roof, shouldn't we be able to recieve freeview through the dish? Digital auto-tuning gives us nothing, and we followed all the steps listed on the Freeviewnz site.

Any help would be appreciated, and if anyone knows if we can somehow identify whether the aerial is UHF or not without getting on the roof that would be useful.

And I would suspect we are in freeview covered area, we are in the middle of Glenfield North Shore.

wellygary

5012 posts

Uber Geek

#463065 27-Apr-2011 16:35

You cannot get Freeview from the dish without a Set Top Box, TVs only have Freeview|HD built in not satellite

What does the aerial look like?
UHF
UHF aerial

or
VHF

Stu

Hammered
5518 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#463067 27-Apr-2011 16:36

No, the dish is only for DVB-S (Satellite) reception, but your TV only has a DVB-T (Terrestrial) receiver. You'll need to use the UHF aerial. You might have to trace the cables back to the aerials to make sure the previous owners didn't take any multiplexers or signal amps with them leaving nothing but dead cables in the house. It happens all the time.

bellyfrog

99 posts

Master Geek

#463073 27-Apr-2011 16:57

Thank you for the quick responses! Yes our aerials literally look like those pictures one on top of the other so I assume we have UHF and VHF.

Is it possible that the cable we are running between the TV and the wire is not compatible with freeview signal?

The cable is model P228 coaxial to coaxial fly lead.

robjg63

3166 posts

Uber Geek

#463079 27-Apr-2011 17:03

The TV should have 2 tuners - one analog and one Freeview HD digital.

When you go into the tuning menu you should be able to tune in prime/maori TV on the UHF aerial on the analog tuner - probably tv1/2/3 which would be VHF - might get them on the UHF aerial. Can you get them? If you get prime ok the rule of thumb is that you should get Freeview HD ok (usually).

So if you run through the Freeview tuning do you see it detecting any channels - they usually display what is happening in the scan.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

Jaxson

7121 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#463083 27-Apr-2011 17:13

What devices will need an aerial connection?

Do you only have freeview units now? If so, you could ditch the VHF aerial altogether....

bellyfrog

99 posts

Master Geek

#463085 27-Apr-2011 17:16

robjg63: The TV should have 2 tuners - one analog and one Freeview HD digital.

When you go into the tuning menu you should be able to tune in prime/maori TV on the UHF aerial on the analog tuner - probably tv1/2/3 which would be VHF - might get them on the UHF aerial. Can you get them? If you get prime ok the rule of thumb is that you should get Freeview HD ok (usually).

So if you run through the Freeview tuning do you see it detecting any channels - they usually display what is happening in the scan.

Hi,

we get maori tv from the auto tune no problem, prime i haven't seen yet. (have only tried auto tuning analogue though, could try manual tuning)

However we were not getting ONE before and now suddenly on the latest tune we have ONE... And no Maori TV anymore! Is this strange?

I had a bit of an expedition round under the house and basically the wiring goes

uhf + vhf wired into box on the aerial post, one wire drops under the house and enters a 2 way splitter, only one wire coming out of the splitter which comes up into the living room, and then we have the coaxial going into the TV.

cldlr76

289 posts

Ultimate Geek

#463105 27-Apr-2011 18:27

The box on the aaerial post is a diplexer to combine the UHF and VHF signal into 1.

My UHF is crap and when it is run through the diplexer there isn't enough signal to get freeview, but when I ran a cable directly from the UHF aerial to the receiver I get freeview with no problems.

So you could try hooking the single cable coming out of the diplexer into the UHF aerial and see if that improves your results. Also the splitters could be degrading the signal so removing those could help too.

Of course this means you won't have a VHF signal anymore so if you have other tv's that don't have freeview tuners they will only get UHF channels, i.e. prime and maori.

kiwigeek1

638 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#463116 27-Apr-2011 18:44

In our house we have 4 cables as well.. 2 are from the dish and go in to the sky HD a has 2 tuners and one is from the outside antenna and 4th is used to send the combined signal with sky mixed on chan 33 on the vh/uh freq so any room in house can plug in and see sky and normal tv.. also if I plug the output into a USB dvb-t dongel on PC I can get clear freeview im out in te country side of CHCH so signal is weaker

so rabbit ears arent good but with the dick smith antenna with rf AMP ON IT ONE CAN ALSO GET MOST OF THE FREEVIEW CHANNELS VIA IT great for testing out things..

so you could try the $65 antenna from them in back of tv as make shift until work out which cable is antenna terresterial and others are sat.

tv antenna run at different ohmage? 75ohm not 50ohm

kiwigeek1

638 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#463122 27-Apr-2011 18:56

reading what you said sounds like your antenna not dish go to a splitter from the antenna then later gets split again with one cable to tv directly

does sound like you be loosing signal you normally need so RF booster powered box to rank up the signal..

when you tune in on PC on weak rabbit ears you also get it missing some freeview DVB-T channels and only finds some.. which sounds liek whats happening there.

you could buy the RF amp from dick smiths to boost the signal cost about $50.. its a white box with one antenna imput and 2 outputs do a search on dse.co.nz

else might need to rewire the antenna as someone suggested so its one cable straight in the back.

manual tuning is way to go

but if the house is in a valley o hlly places dvb-t antenna might never be any good there and you might need a sat feed into tv...

if you tv doesnt have dvb-s I guess you have to get a sep top box that does and feed its output to tv ,. more cost of course

trig42

5052 posts

Uber Geek

#463254 28-Apr-2011 09:33

To the OP - where do you live? Are you in a Freeview|HD area? If you are able to tune Maori TV in, your TV should pick up all Freeview Channels on a Digital Scan (assuming DVB-T is broadcast in your area).

If it is, I would recommend running the cable from the UHF aerial directly to your TV (take it out of the Diplexor, get a joiner, run it to your TV).

robjg63

3166 posts

Uber Geek

#463264 28-Apr-2011 09:52

bellyfrog:
robjg63: The TV should have 2 tuners - one analog and one Freeview HD digital.

When you go into the tuning menu you should be able to tune in prime/maori TV on the UHF aerial on the analog tuner - probably tv1/2/3 which would be VHF - might get them on the UHF aerial. Can you get them? If you get prime ok the rule of thumb is that you should get Freeview HD ok (usually).

So if you run through the Freeview tuning do you see it detecting any channels - they usually display what is happening in the scan.

Hi,

we get maori tv from the auto tune no problem, prime i haven't seen yet. (have only tried auto tuning analogue though, could try manual tuning)

However we were not getting ONE before and now suddenly on the latest tune we have ONE... And no Maori TV anymore! Is this strange?

I had a bit of an expedition round under the house and basically the wiring goes

uhf + vhf wired into box on the aerial post, one wire drops under the house and enters a 2 way splitter, only one wire coming out of the splitter which comes up into the living room, and then we have the coaxial going into the TV.

So thats the analog tuning...
The Freeview digital tuner picks up absolutely nothing?
Do you have 2 tuning options? Analog and Digital?
Just to be clear - does the TV have 2 tuning systems?
I know our Panny plasma has 2 seperate tuners - not sure how your sony handles it...

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler