Argos aerials

Cas2007

argo's new catalogue has outdoor digitial tv aerials and pc usb digitial tv tuner BUT its not on argos.ie and they are not selling freeview boxes

L1011

...no such thing as a digital TV aerial (again!)...

watty

No digital TV service here either.

Cas2007

from the argos book
1. philex large high gain tv areial
digital-yes fitting & cable-yes
additional features:suitable for freeview and analogue tv.
cat no 535/2069 €50.49
prf €0.50 base price €49.99image from argos.co.uk but its the same image from the irish catalogue

L1011

Argos make stuff up
Dixons make stuff up

Theres no such thing as a digital aerial. There are people on here who've worked in the installation trade, broadcast industry, etc, for many many years...

Cas2007

ok but is it not a aerial that recieves digital and analogue tv

Ulsterman 1690

Any aerial capable of recieving analouge signals within a given frequency range will also recieve digital signals

Thats what aerials do

"Digital aerial" is salesspeak for either a wideband UHF aerial or (at the cheap and really nasty of the market) a piece of metal attached to an amplifier

sesswhat

watty wrote:

No digital TV service here either.

Depends where here is of course.

watty

OK no PUBLIC IRISH DTT ANYWHERE

watty

All digital broadcasts other than morse code (carrier on or off) actually use ANALOGUE signals. The digital information is coded on the Analogue signal.

I can't imagine any of the Argos aerials are really worth getting. Almost no retail aerials are any good.

No such thing as a "Digital" TV amplifier or Digital Satellite dish or Digital Satellite LNB.

Even the 1st stages of a "Digital Receiver" or decoder are Analogue. In fact if you change the DSP software some "digital" receiver/decoder designs could receive analogue signals. At the minute only high-end / professional LW/MW/SW radio receivers work this way as an ordinary superhet for AM/FM can be done in one $2 chip and run off an AA cell. Doing Analogue Radio / TV with a digital receiver properly needs more memory and processor power than the digital broadcasts. Typically $2500+ for a cheap HF SDR system. I'm playing with a cheap one ($32), but it cheats by using 2GHz of PC and 192KHz sampling sound card with a zero IF I&Q mixer/Local oscillator.

TV, Satellite or even DAB frequencies are too high even for expensive DSP hardware, so analogue circuitry converts down to two signals with zero IF (but about 10MHz to 50MHz bandwidth). These two analogue signals are converted to digital like a sound card (except about 60MHz sample rate instead of 48kHz common on sound cards). Then the DSP chip recovers the digital signal from the digitised analogue signal. Further hardwared then decodes the MPE2, MP2, ACC, MPEG4, MP3 etc to uncoded digital. This then feed DAC (Digital to Analogue convertor) for line outs, RF modulators, SCART etc. With HDMI the DAC is inside the TV.

Ulsterman 1690

All digital broadcasts other than morse code (carrier on or off) actually use ANALOGUE signals. The digital information is coded on the Analogue signal.

Including the system that broadcasters describe by the ridiculous term "analouge teletext"

Not sure if I fully agree with the statement above though. Just because a signal is transmitted via a form of PSK or FSK doesnt make it any less "digital" than pure ICW