[mythtvnz] Indoor DVB-T antennas.

[David Moore]

On 23/01/15 14:33, Nick Rout wrote:
> I just moved house and the Sky dish seems to be the only antenna
> brought out to a socket inside the house. The (fairly old looking)
> terrestrial antenna doesn't seem to be connected to anything. I have
> been resigned to using my old DVB-S cards as I can't screw about with
> the landlord's wiring. Obviously with freeview terrestrial is the
> preferred solution as it is h264 and some channels are HD.
>
> But I was in Bunnings today and they had a range of indoor antennas,
> which got me thinking about that as a solution. Between the place
> where the antenna would have to go and a clear view to Sugarloaf there
> are two internal walls and an external (timber framing/gib on
> internals and timber framing/oamaru stone on the outside.)
>
> Is it possible to say if this will work, or is the only solution to
> invest and try it?
>
I reckon you might have to try it if the antennas are cheap enough. I 
bought a cheap supposed indoor antenna from Dick Smith a few years ago. 
It's a mini-Yagi on a stand which looks about right for ~600 MHz but 
also has rabbit ears. Turned out that the Yagi is useless and I got the 
best signal by telescoping the rabbit ears to their minimum length and 
adjusting the angle just right. So I'm somewhat skeptical about cheap 
indoor antennas.

Maybe just make some rabbit ears from some wire or ribbon cable and try 
it? Length approx 150 mm seems to work for me. I originally had an old 
FM radio ribbon cable antenna working reasonably well too for HD TV.

I am shooting through an outer brick wall and have direct line-of-sight 
to Waiatarua (Auck) from maybe 15 km. I get full signal strength and 
very good S/N according to my Panasonic TV and I have a splitter between 
the TV and Myth box.

One thing I found was it doesn't take much metal to completely kill the 
signal so I guess you're out of luck if there is any foil in the walls 
or if Oamaru stone has a high conductive content.