Freeview - how far can it reach?

yellabelly

What counties can get Freeview from Divis going south? I am about to have a new aerial for Clermont Carn and was contemplating trying Freeview. I'm near Trim where the analogue is usually OK with amplification and enough height. I have satellite so it doesn't have to be 100%. I wouldn't want to go to the expense for just analogue because it will be gone in a few years. Thanks

watty

Add lots of aerials on big mast.

Not really worth it that far away since you have satellite.

yellabelly

watty wrote:

Not really worth it that far away since you have satellite.

You are probably right because it will not bring anything I don't already have.

There would be advantages for multi-room distribution.
New TVs can make use of inbuilt DVB-T tuners with program guides. It would be a good experiment all the same.

Ulsterman 1690

You are probably right because it will not bring anything I don't already have

.

Are you sure

UK history, E4, More 4, ABC, Channels 4 and 5, Five Life, Five US are on Freeview but only available to satellite viewers with a UK sky sub or an Irish Sky sub AND a FTV card

Of course you may decide that none of the channels above worth having

Mossy Monk

Ulsterman 1690 wrote:

.

Are you sure

UK history, E4, More 4, ABC, Channels 4 and 5, Five Life, Five US are on Freeview but only available to satellite viewers with a UK sky sub or an Irish Sky sub AND a FTV card

Of course you may decide that none of the channels above worth having

He did say he had satellite. Could be a Sky package of some sort.

yellabelly

Mossy Monk wrote:

He did say he had satellite. Could be a Sky package of some sort.

It's only an FTV card so there's a few extra channels to be had on Freeview. I also have a multisat Dreambox which in my opinion is the ultimate system. The next generation Dreambox is going to get better with HD and 2 pluggable tuner modules mixing either DVB-T, DVB-S or DVB-C.

watty

Well it's technically possible. But you want a good aerial system that could be close to 1000 Eur.

I'd worry about how successful Topup TV and Sky will be migrating some of the current FTA in Freeview (that are payTv on Sat already) to MPEG4 pay tv, on basis of saving money or making money.

watty

yellabelly wrote:

It's only an FTV card so there's a few extra channels to be had on Freeview. I also have a multisat Dreambox which in my opinion is the ultimate system. The next generation Dreambox is going to get better with HD and 2 pluggable tuner modules mixing either DVB-T, DVB-S or DVB-C.

The Reelbox does all this now, with DVD writer and up to two dual tuners, in any mix of DVB-S, DVBs2, DVB-c and DVB-t per module, with SCART, USB, Ethernet and Wifi OR HDMI/HD option inc browser.

However the current User Interface is rubbish.

yellabelly

watty wrote:

The Reelbox does all this now, with DVD writer and up to two dual tuners, in any mix of DVB-S, DVBs2, DVB-c and DVB-t per module, with SCART, USB, Ethernet and Wifi OR HDMI/HD option inc browser.

However the current User Interface is rubbish.

Reelbox appears to be an excellent piece of kit. I suspect they fetch a premium price. Wonder how they compare in price to Dreambox 8000 when it finally comes out. I find the Dreambox UI good with Gemini image. Easy streaming to PCs around the house from a Web interface. Dreambox has the advantage of lots of available software. Maybe most of this would run on the Reelbox also being Linux based. I wouldn't be so bothered about built in DVD recording as it has a hard disk. Like the HDMI/HD option for the future. USB gives lots of possibilities. You might as well just buy a PC the way things are going.

watty wrote:

Well it's technically possible. But you want a good aerial system that could be close to 1000 Eur.

The installer said the extra antenna and amplifier for Freeview would be €450 (not including installation I think). That kind of money would be better invested in one of these wonder boxes.
My priority is a good aerial at Clermont Carn for digital. My loft installation at Kippure looks poor since we upgraded to LCD TV.

LCD televisions always look poor to me, like watching internet streaming video.

rogue-entity

Karsini wrote:

LCD televisions always look poor to me, like watching internet streaming video.

That is probably to do with the loss of quality when converting from analogue to digital, and then the fact that the analogue PAL signal has a lower resolution then the LCD's native resolution, so the picture is either upscaled or stretched, making it look worse. Noise and picture defects are more noticable on an LCD (or any other digital display like a plasma). If you connect a STB or DVD player with a SCART set to RGB, or using YPrPb cables, you will get a generally excellent quality picture. DVDs actually look better on our 32" HD LCD then they do on my 30 year old 21" TV. Where as the broadcast analogue we get on Cable looks better on my TV then it does on the LCD. I know Watty or someone can probably give a much better explanation.

watty

A lot of NON-HD LCDs are much lower resolution than LCD. Also unless the LCD is twice the TV resolution, you have to line up the analogue detail exactly horizontally (vertical is easier), which is hard.

zilog_jones

LCD and plasma TVs also need to de-interlace analogue TV - there's many ways of de-interlacing, some methods being quite complex, and a TV's ability to de-interlace can vary greatly.

PAL is (usually ) 576 (viewable) lines interlaced, which means 288 of these (every other line) is refreshed every 50th of a second. With a CRT, these lines are refreshed just like that, but thanks to the decay time of the picture and stuff it ends up looking good - although you may notice how fine horizontal lines and stuff may shimmer a lot.

LCD displays (and I assume plasmas too) just can't refresh in the same way - they typically can only refresh the whole screen at once, i.e. they are "progressive scan" displays. So before displaying an SDTV picture some processing needs to be done to convert the 50 interlaced fields per second to 50 progressive frames per second (or 59.94 for NTSC).

Cheaper sets will just double the lines vertically (aka "bob deinterlacing"), which looks piss poor IMO as the vertical resolution will always visibly be only 288 lines. Decent sets will do a combination of different deinterlacing and motion compensation and other pretty things.

More info here.

And as watty said, interpolation can also affect quality. With LCD and plasma displays, the pixels are fixed - i.e. there is only one true resolution that it can do properly. This is why, say with a typical 17" computer monitor, only 1280x1024 will look "good" and all other resolutions look considerably blurrier - the monitor uses some form interpolation to make the pixels "fit", and of course they're rarely going to divide into each other well.
With a CRT, you can display whatever the hell resolution you like - the only limits are what frequencies the circuitry can take and how fine the dots on the screen are (e.g. you can usually display 1024x768 on a 15" CRT computer monitor, but usually because of the dot pitch it'll look like blurry ass).

All this is still a problem with digital SDTV, but of course the input signal will be a lot cleaner and won't require analogue-to-digital conversion using whatever cheap processing is available in the TV set.

dkane

I live just outside Trim (near Kiltale stores) on Dublin Road. I can pick up most MUXes from Brougher Mountain when there is a bit of lift.
Aerial is not very high and only has old brown coax that was used maybe 10 years ago when the aerial was installed.
Have been threatening to recable it with higher grade cable and turn it to Divis for a while now but never got around to it.
Have perfect reception of Irish DTT channels off Claremont Cairn too.

yellabelly

Thanks very much for the info. I am getting the aerial in the next couple of weeks. We are on the Navan Road about a 1/2 mile out and approximately 30 metres above sea level. I'm hopeful of getting Freeview from either Divas or Brougher Mountain. I'll report back on the results.