Bad signal - Digital card or Analogue?

[Andeh13]

I’m at university and the aerial on this building gives us a poor TV signal. As a result my USB DVB-T card won’t pick up any channels. Would an analogue card be able to pick up channels, but just at a very poor quality?

(i heard digital either picks up channels or doesn’t, whilst analogue can pick up channels but will just show them at a very poor quality)


cheers guys.

[tfboy]

It depends on where you are. Some aerial transmitters in the UK are still only analogue, whereas others do both, but the digital transmission is of lower power (to stop interfering with analogue).

I'd give it a go. General rule of thumb is if you don't get analogue, you don't stand a chance of getting digital, so if you don't quite get good digital, you may well be able to get analogue

[kalniel]

I'd test another analogue TV first to be sure, but yeah, you'll probably be fine with an analogue card, might just not get channel 5 or something (what a pity )

[directhex]

believe it or not, signal boosters actually work with digital

i go from one channel to all channels available at home with one

[MSIC]

It's not 100% accurate to say that you either get a digital signal or you don't, but you certainly do not get an easily watchable signal if your digital connection isn't very good. At least an analogue signal, if fuzzy, can be watched.

[Andeh13]

yeh, that was my general feeling, as long as its watchable im happy.


cheers for the advice guys.

[directhex]

again, i'd recommend a signal booster and digital. it really makes a difference!

[prehensile]

before buying anything, see if you can get 5 m of cable and a round loop-aerial/basic TV aerial on a long lead so you can check out all of the room for hotspots and see if you can get any channels at all. To do this it is best to have your TV already tuned and find out which of the strongest channels fade in and out in different parts of the room, in my old bedroom and in this current bedroom 95% of of all walls and ceiling have a really crappy reception, but there is one singles spot somewhere above waist height where reception is perfect, 10 times better than the whole of the rest of the bedroom. You should also try adjusting the thing on your building because it is probably at right angles to the signal you're trying to catch have to swivel it and try it out one meter to the right and left. Ask the landlord if you can give you access to his roof and have a go.hotspots depend on really weird unguessable stuff like foil insulation walls and magnetic fields or shapes of hills and valleys in the area it is completely unpredictable.