With the location of the UK in position with many of the world satellites, it is impossible for a signal to every be picked up. Why, well this is because the satellites are either the other side of the equator and due to the curvature of the earth the signal from the satellite cannot be received. However, there are still plenty of foreign satellite platforms that can be received from the uk.

For satellite TV for countries such as Germany, Austria, France the type of satellite dish required is usually the same as you would have installed to receive Sky or Freesat in this country, since we are on a similar latitude as these countries, but to pick up channels off satellites broadcasting to Turkey or Bulgaria etc, the dish will need to be a lot bigger. I recently did a satellite dish installation for 'Thor' group of satellites that beams out channels for Hungarian TV amongst others. 

When it comes to installing this kind of dish, it does take about twice the amount of time to do since the signal is a lot weaker and therefor harder to pick up. It requires a 1 meter satellite dish. In the picture it shows me installing the dish on a house in Kendal for a customer recently. Happily I was able to pick up the signal with the 1 meter dish and the satellite installation went smoothly.

There are so many houses in Preston that will have more than one TV aerial installed for their homes. I have personally seen in my many years as an aerial fitter, countless houses with 2, 3, 4 or more TV antennas on one mast with all of the cables going into the same property. In most cases the aerials will be individually feeding one TV point in the home, but that is not the best way to supply a house with multiple aerial points television feed to each point. So, why do aerial installers fit more than one aerial to a property?

The reason is usually down to getting the most out of the job. You , see when a homeowner calls a TV aerial fitter to carry out an aerial installation to another room in their home, the customer will not know whether they will need a new aerial or if the aerial they have enough quality signal for it to be fitted with a passive outdoor splitter from which other coax cable can be run into other rooms of the house to feed more TV points. Even in cases whether the signal is only good enough for one point, it can still be split using an amplified splitter device.

On a recent TV aerial installation in Preston, I was asked to fit an aerial that would feed 4 rooms in the house, they were the living room or lounge, the kitchen dining room, and two bedrooms. The whole set up would be fed by only one TV aerial. This would then be connected to an amplified splitter that sat at the base of the aerial mast. The power to the amp is sent via one of the coax cables, the amo also has a 25 db gain, so it is ideal if the original signal is weak, yet has good quaity.

The mast head amplifier pictured above is set up so it can feed up to 6 individual rooms or aerial points in one house off just a single aerial. With this kind of set up it is left for anyone to ask why would any aerial installer not just fit one of these instead of having to install another brand new aerial to a house. For this and more info, please get in touch with Julian at Julian Voigt Aerial & Satellite.

With many of the new build properties in Preston, you may notice that most will not have an externally mounted TV aerials fitted to their chimneys, gable ends or anywhere on the outside of there buildings. The reason for this is a simple one, the architects of the housing estate felt that externally fitted aerials are unsightly and felt that it is aesthetically pleasing to require the new owners to have their TV antennas fitted internally, namely in the loft.

So, this is a good question and one that depends on quite a few different factors, they are;

1. Location of the property
2. The type of insulation within the loft
3. The number of TV points the TV Aerial is feeding

Location
So, there a few factors to take in to consideration before installing a TV aerial in a loft. Looking at where the house is, in respect to where the TV transmitter is, if it is visible, even if its 20 or more miles away, and yes sometimes they can be seen from that far of, then the chances are that the signal will be strong enough to be picked up from within the loft. Fitting TV Aerials in a loft in Preston should in most cases will be OK, since it isn't that far for the signal from Winter Hill to travel to get to the antenna. If though, the house sits in a valley and by looking around, you see other houses that have externally mounted aerials, but on very tall masts, the chances of getting a good enough signal in the loft are very slim indeed.
In either case, unless it is obvious that there is going to be no chance , it is always best practice to connect up the aerial to a meter and test before installing, whether there is going to be a good enough signal first.

Loft Insulation
Most homes will not be insulated with the kind that will block signal. However, to clarify, I am not talking about the loft insulation that one would lay down on the floor of the loft. The kind I'm talking about is the foam boards that have an aluminium foil outer cover that are used to line the roof itself. With this kind of insulation covering the inside of the roof, there is no way on earth that a TV signal will be penetrating that.

Number of TV Points
So, the thing with loft aerials is that by fitting them in lofts rather than externally, you can lose up to 50% of the available signal, and in any case there is always going to be a reduction of signal went fitting an aerial in the loft. So, depending on the quality of signal and strength of it will in some cases restrict the number of aerial points it can feed. 
A way around this would be to install some kind of amplified signal booster to evenly spit the signal and even boost it, so that it can be distributed around the home to the TV points, delivering a signal both strong enough and clean enough to be able to watch uninterrupted television.

​As previously mentioned, carrying out an aerial installation in a loft for most properties in & around the Preston area, should be fine. Unless it has the wrong kind of insulation or the house is positioned behind some geographical obstacle such as trees or a hill, then the will be enough of a digital signal to be received by a loft aerial. For more info on this subject feel free to give me a call.  

With the competition in trying to get your attention to watch the ever increasing number of TV platforms, television broadcasters both new and old seem to be popping up everywhere. So should the traditional platform of TV broadcasts via terrestrial Aerial Masts now admit defeat and shrink into the shadows, never to be seen again? Well, it may surprise you that despite TV now broadcast over broadband becoming more popular, there seems to be no demise in viewers watching their favourite telly through the airwaves as they have always done. In a report just out "National Obsession, Our Relationship with TV" 

There is a big part of peoples lives taken up with watching TV because it is a social time for friends and family. Particularly when the soaps are on it is not only a time to sit down and watch together but also it helps when conversing with colleges or friends as it is often a topic of conversation. 
It certainly seems that the traditional way we watch TV hasn't changed too much over the years and it looks like it will be here for years to come. For help with any TV reception problems or for TV Aerial Installation click here 

IT seems that Sky is not content with the burgeoning UK market, as it is in talks with the 2 major European versions of Sky TV. Both the Italian and German Versions of Sky TV are in stages of being taken over. It seems that it will be merged into one huge Sky Europe TV for the continent.
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2014/10/13/german-approval-for-sky-europe/

Picking up a foreign satellite channel is relatively easy for a satellite installation engineer here in the UK. Sometimes a larger satellite dish is required, depending on how far the actual signal is coming from. For Sky Deutschland or Italia, the size of dish would be no more than a 60cm satellite dish to receive these channels. Although it would be necessary to sign up to these sky channels and get the viewing card first. When the merger of these two channels happen, there may be a one stop shop from Sky to receive these channels across the whole of Europe. We'll have to wait and see.

Are Talk Talk providing more quality or just more quantity? As of this month there are going to be more Television channels offered for Talk Talk customers using their Youview service. The channels are targeted at the African community based in the UK. With an extra subscription cost of £10 a month the very niche channels are targeting a very small demographic living in the UK. Out of this demographic, how many would be willing to pay extra for these channels? As reported in Seen It 

Having issues with your TV Reception? Well if you receive your TV through your Television Aerial/Antenna, then it could be due to the interference coming from the new 4G transmissions. 

What is 4G? Well simply put, it is the new super fast wireless service for mobile phones, a great addition to mobile phone service, but in some areas, because it is transmitted so close to some Freeview channels it can cause interference, as reported on the cai website.... 

Having said this, if you are getting reception problems with your Freeview TV, then the only way to know is to call out a professional TV Aerial Engineer. He would need to us a spectrum analyser to determine if your TV reception is having problems due to interference from 4g or because of other issues. 

A news article in The Argus has reported that in the Brighton area, a number of properties have had their TV Aerials stolen, along with cable and electrical boxes. Given the resale value of scrap metal, it is probable that the equipment that was lifted is going to be sold on for its scrap value. Copper in the electrical cable and coax cable is a valuable metal and so this can attract the kind of theft we see here. Though you often hear of cable theft from railway lines etc due o the size and length of the cable there, it is unusual to here of this kind of theft.

Unless I'm wrong and this was a desperate attempt to drum up trade for some local TV Aerial Installer. 

A report released by Post Office and Freeview(1) discloses that customers are investing many eating if this involves their TV, telephone and broadband bundles, because of significant changes in the manner home theatre submissions are utilized.

Vision and cost 2014 - a test of TV, broadband and residential phone usage among customers that like to bundle the help - discovered that monthly investing on bundles has elevated by £1 since 2013, costing each household typically £50 monthly(2). This translates for an overall national spend of £3.3billion(3).

The report has additionally discovered that almost 1 in 5 United kingdom bundle customers (19 percent) is investing yet another £10 monthly(4) on online TV monthly subscriptions. Over half (55 percent) are utilizing services for example Netflix and LoveFilm additionally to, and never instead of, existing compensated-for TV funnel packages. Just 18 percent begin using these services like a total alternative for any traditional TV package.

Supersizing continues within the broadband options being created using two fifths of bundle customers within the United kingdom (39 percent) now registered to limitless broadband download capacity, a four percent increase on 2013 (35 percent). However, just one in twenty from the overall homes (6 percent) would ever exceed 41GB monthly and nearly sixty-six per cent (62 percent) have no clue just how much they really use. Almost another of participants (29 percent) don't know what capacity they're having to pay for.

Streaming Television shows and films may be the eighth most widely used use for broadband in 2014 a task which utilizes a comparatively minimal data transfer speed of 7Mbps for Super HD quality viewing(5). Similarly, browsing the web, checking emails and social media remain typically the most popular online activities in 75 % of homes (77 percent), needing basics speed of just 5Mbps. Regardless of this, United kingdom homes are having to pay to have an average speed of 32Mbps, that is over six occasions greater compared to what they need.

There's what's promising for customers. The price of TV ‘wastage’ - the total amount allocated to compensated-for channels that are connecting unwatched - has decreased since this past year. With the price of TV entertainment inside a bundle calculating at £22 monthly in 2014, homes are investing £184.80 per year on unwatched Television channels - a discount of £14.52(6) per household. However, this still translates to in excess of £965million(7) wasted each year.

Hugh Stacey, Publish Office HomePhone and Broadband, stated: “The Vision and cost report has once more outlined the significance of understanding the requirements of all your family members if this involves selecting the best TV, telephone and broadband package. Bigger isn’t always better. Despite the fact that customers are being able to access greater amounts of content online, most homes require only a sixth from the capacity that they're having to pay for.”

Guy North, Marketing And Sales Communications Director at Freeview adds: “Although an growing quantity of customers are putting their hands within their pockets to cover additional online streaming services, there's still a great deal of cash wasted on compensated-for Television channels which are unwatched. People should regularly asses their viewing habits to be getting good value using their TV service.”

We were asked to carry out a digital TV Aerial Installation, feeding 2 TV Points at this home in Blackpool, situated very close the the Pleasure Beach. They already had a working aerial on a mast which was in ok condition, but wanted more points. We suggested combining all three into one aerial, but they were just happy to have us fit an aerial to the existing mast and then feed the cable from a 2 way splitter to the TV points in the extension and the back bedroom.