I am in a similar position. My strongest transmitter is Sutton Coldfield roughly NE of my location. In that direction I have a wood with tall trees in that direction. During the winter months with no foliage on the trees I have no issues. Once the spring arrives and foliage arrives, in still conditions reception is fine. Once the foliage arrives and the wind blows I get total breakdown of reception. Some research reveals it's likely a variation of the familiar multipath ghosting associated with former analogue transmission.
Fortunately from the DTG reception predictor, I have an alternative transmitter.
It's a much lower power relay located in the opposite direction at Lark Stoke south of Stratford On Avon.
It lacks the extra COM 7 and COM 8 mux but otherwise has the full complement of channels.
I was able to replace a 20 ft mast with a huge high gain DAT75, with a log36 in my loft and now get some low power indicated mux, but more importantly quality remains at 100%.
Digital TV has built in error correction that can correct some errors in the data stream to provide a perfect picture.
The important quality indicates the amount of error correction required.
100% means the tuner has no issues determining which of the received bits is a zero or one (hence perfect reception).
If you have say 40% strength and 100% quality you will have the best quality reception possible from the channel you are watching.
The reverse means zero or frequent break up of the picture into a pixellated mess.
Amplification in this situation is unlikely to help unless the problem is down to unwanted rf interference picked up on the coax downlead.
Moving the amplification as near as possible to the aerial and using a high quality low noise masthead amp ( they can be remotely powered from the remote end of a coax downlead).
Other than that aerial source amplification should really only be used to support subsequent passive signal spitting to feed multiple tuners.
| Sat 19 May 2018 21:57:36
#23 |