Freeview indoor aerial

ijc

Hi,
I posted a while ago about receiving freeview on the Irish east coast. I saw an article in the July edition of What Satellite for an indoor aerial that has been specially designed for DTT. It has been developed for the Dutch market but is supposed to work for the UK aswell. It called the Funke Dsg200 digital signal collector. Here's what the article says:

The Funke Dsg200 digital signal collector is an active indoor antenna which is designed to amplify digital terrestrial TV signals.
It is suitable for both the 16QAM and 64QAM signal modes which are used in the United Kingdom, and it has a super-flexible coaxial cable for easy handling.
The DSG200 can be used in passive mode or with a 5V power supply to amplify weak signals.
The antenna was designed for the Digitenne terrestrial pay-TV service, which hopes to avoid the reception problems that doomed ITV Digital.

Here's the website address.
http://www.funke.nl/digitenne/digitenne.htm
Does anyone have any experience of these and would they improve my reception? Could any indoor aerial be better than a roof mounted outdoor aerial?
Thanks, IJC

John R

A properly aligned outdoor antenna will easily beat any indoor gadget. If you need better reception you will have to add some altitude to your aerial or get a bigger aerial, possibly twin or quadruple your current one. Much expense for either option and possibly a lot of ugly metalwork too.

Lennoxschips

That Funke antenna is for the Dutch market, and therefore designed to be used with a transmitter that's about 20 miles away, across flat land. They can get away with antennas like that in Holland because the country is so flat. Signals travel far and transmitters can cover a fairly large area.

If you are trying to receive signals from another country (as in your case) you're probably better off buying a proper outdoor aerial for the correct band.

lawhec

I know of no indoor aerial that can outperform an outdoor aerial. Even a cheap wideband UHF ten element aerial with a decent downlead will give better results than a "good" indoor aerial.

I guess that the aerial described is designed to cut out electrical noise that can spoil DTT reception that can so easily happen indoors. Another thing to consider is that the Netherlands is heavily cabled with very few people having outdoor aerials. As such Digitenne would need an aerial like this to work well within a strog service area to avoid their customers having to fit an outdoor aerial.

ijc

Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah, I didn't hold out much hope for the antenna, I just thought I'd ask. It was an interesting point you made, Lennoxchips, about the country being so flat in Holland that these Funke atennas would work better there.
Yeah I think I'd heard Holland was a heavily cabled area. I guess in a country where land is scarce, they would build more houses closer together making cable, the obvious choice.
And adding some height to the outdoor aerial would probably help as I'm next to a hill.
Thanks again
IJC