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Old 27th Feb 2023, 10:44 am   #1
G6Tanuki
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Default Demise of the TV aerial.

In had a guy round recently to give me an estimate for installing a VHF collinear antenna on my roof [I'm distinctly afraid of working-at-height].

We got talking, and he said that his terrestrial-TV-antenna trade is down by around 20-25% compared to pre-COVID. Satellite dishes [he is a Sky agent/installer] are still in demand, but that too is tailing-off rapidly.

He also said he used to keep a few FM Band-II broadcast antennas [both the horrid-halo type and 3-element Yagis] back at base but no longer does so because he was only asked to fit one every couple of months and there was no point tying up his money in dead-stock.

He often gets asked by householders to remove disused antennas/dishes but not to bother replacing them with anything.

I guess that like the telly-repair business, the telly-aerial-erection business is similarly doomed.
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 12:24 pm   #2
Roger Ramjet
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

A rented property at the back of us has an old pole with FM plus Yagi hanging on the coaxial cables half way down the roof & has been like that for over 20 years.

Makes me smile... when we grew up in a council house, the council were quite strict about TV aerials & even insisted the tenant had insurance for damage caused by them

When the tenancy changed hands the council had to do a lot of work to make it habitable [by today's standards] but ignored the aerials hanging perilously on the roof ?

Rog

Last edited by Roger Ramjet; 27th Feb 2023 at 12:27 pm. Reason: typo
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 12:35 pm   #3
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

I never given that a thought but yes, if the way forward is via a cable the need for aerials will gradually fade away.
If 5G does what is said to accomplish then there could be 5G aerials required.
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 1:10 pm   #4
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Last year the masthead amp failed on our aerial. The installer put a new aerial up and said that the chimney stack needed repointing.
We got someone in to repoint the stack, and he said, 'while I'm up here I can take the aerial down if you want because people don't use them anymore'.
Needless to say we didn't take him up on the offer.
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 1:52 pm   #5
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

It's the future descent of aerials that worries me a little, not the demise!
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 2:00 pm   #6
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

I suspect Freeview is on borrowed time... They'll sell the bandwidth for 5G and use that to distribute TV as Nuvistor suggests. A whole new generation of set top boxes!

Two different neighbours have had their 'main' TV aerials collapse recently. No repairs have occurred, they're clearly no longer in use.
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 3:25 pm   #7
G6Tanuki
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

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Originally Posted by wd40addict View Post
I suspect Freeview is on borrowed time... They'll sell the bandwidth for 5G and use that to distribute TV as Nuvistor suggests. A whole new generation of set top boxes!
Most people already have the necessary tech: just add a suitable stick to the HDMI port of your TV and use your [5G-enabled] phone to 'cast' to the telly.

No need for a 'set top box' [why do people still call them that, I never saw one sitting on top of a telly and these days tellies are so slim that a mouse would have difficulty balancing on top of one].

I really do feel that the age of the TV Aerial is passing; will, in 40 years time, our successors be running a thread about "Terrestrial TV antennas 2030 to the present time" in the same way we have a long-running thread on 405-line TV antennas that are still extant?
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 11:23 pm   #8
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

I've been doing some house hunting recently, & the house that is probably going to be the one I move so has an aerial at an funny angle which might need sorting out. The house also has a Sky Digital dish which I imagine is being used for viewing.
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Old 27th Feb 2023, 11:49 pm   #9
60 oldjohn
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

I use Freesat but have an aerial in the loft with amp for all the other TVs in the house.

My Daughter has just moved into her house, it had a Sky dish, she only wanted to watch Freeview. Called in the Aerial fixer who took down the dish and fitted an aerial to the same mast.

John.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:25 am   #10
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

There could be a number of reasons why fewer people are asking for TV aerial installations.

The high cost is one factor. People are tempted to try indoor set-top aerials instead of paying for a rooftop one, especially those who are renting their home. Actually, indoor aerials often work quite well. There's no 'snow' on digital TV. Even a relatively poor signal from an indoor aerial can give acceptable results. DAB radios are designed to work from their built-in aerial so most people no longer need an outdoor FM aerial either.

The growth of satellite and cable TV has diminished the need for terrestrial TV aerials. For the cost of installing a TV aerial, you could subscribe to Sky for a year and get a free dish installed, then cancel and just use it for free-to-view channels. Until 2012 terrestrial Freeview was unavailable here, and now it only carries a small selection of channels, so hardly anyone uses it. Almost everyone here has satellite or cable since Freeview coverage is limited to the BBC channels and a few others. The COM multiplexes are not available - there's no airspace for them here because the bandwidth has been allocated to 4G mobile phones. There are still lots of rooftop TV aerials to be seen locally but I suspect most are no longer being used.

Streaming or watching TV programmes online is the latest craze. No aerial or dish needed, plus there's the added attraction of being able to watch what you want when you want. Even better, there's no need to pay for a TV licence as long as you don't stream a programme while it's being broadcast and you don't use BBC iPlayer at any time. More and more people are discovering this loophole.

Some countries traditionally had high uptake of cable or satellite TV with a relatively small number of terrestrial TV viewers. Switzerland actually shut down all of its terrestrial TV transmitters a few years ago, after it was found that very few people were using them. Other countries could well follow suit. I think it will be a long time before that happens in the UK. Terrestrial TV still has millions of viewers in the UK but that could change in the years to come. Then people could be commenting on 'old' UHF aerials like we talk about the old 405-line TV aerials today.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:25 am   #11
emeritus
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

We had our chimey stack-mounted aerial removed when we had our house re-roofed some 5 years ago, but only because we had already stopped using it in favour of a loft aerial for easier connection to an aerial amplifier with multiple outlets for providing tv aerial sockets throughout the house. The builder left the strapping wire in place to help strengthen the stack.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:39 am   #12
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Despite having a Sky Dish and Virgin Cable TV (which comes down the drive and through the flower beds along with our Virgin internet service), we still maintain our UHF TV aerial which feeds a vintage distribution amplifier in the loft. That supplies terrestrial TV to most rooms in the house via a legacy coax cable network whose routing I’ve completely forgotten, but I know that it ends up in the right places. So the TV aerial is still important.

Plus of course for top quality radio we have a 4-element FM aerial to feed the signal-hungry stereo FM tuner.

And I almost forgot, the Band III external DAB aerial feeding a couple of rooms. A decent signal does make an improvement to much-criticised DAB quality.

Is all that excessive? I call it redundancy. Perhaps one day we’ll just rely on the cable coming along the drive and do without ‘all those irons on the roof’ as my grandfather used to call TV aerials. But then, I have been known to slice through that cable whilst tending to the flower beds!


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Old 28th Feb 2023, 8:42 am   #13
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

My wife and I barely get any time to watch telly, it's mainly for the kids in our household.

We moved house nearly 6 months ago, but it was only very recently that we realised that we hadn't actually connected the TV to the rooftop aerial yet, i.e. everything we'd watched had been from BBC iPlayer, Netflix etc. via our landline broadband connection. I have to say I was very surprised when I found this out.

So yes, I have to agree with G6.

OTOH, we still listen to a lot of live FM radio and the signal's weak inside the house, so I can see an external FM aerial taking the place of the TV one on our house at some point
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 10:06 am   #14
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hamid_1 View Post
The high cost is one factor. People are tempted to try indoor set-top aerials instead of paying for a rooftop one, especially those who are renting their home. Actually, indoor aerials often work quite well. There's no 'snow' on digital TV. Even a relatively poor signal from an indoor aerial can give acceptable results. DAB radios are designed to work from their built-in aerial so most people no longer need an outdoor FM aerial either.
Indoor aerials can of course work fine if you can see the transmitter out the window, but otherwise it is more of a gamble, such as the transmitter being to the opposite side of the building. Whilst there is no snow on digital TV, it is far from an 'all or nothing' situation. Some MUXs might work OK, whilst others not so. Signal breakup due to people just walking across the room (or nearby vehicles - if at groundlevel) and interference from electrical appliances. One might contend with some picture breakup/freezes (if not sports etc) but the audio also dropping out is extremely irritating.

One major blunder that occurs with indoor aerials is the use of horizontal polarisation to attempt to receive a Vertical polarised transmitter. If someone (in a likely good signal area) says an indoor aerial they bought doesn't work it is one thing to check out.

Last edited by colourking; 28th Feb 2023 at 10:19 am.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 10:39 am   #15
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

I think, along with the BBC who have floated the idea of "the end of broadcasting", ITV and Sky are going the same way. New ITV series are appearing first on ITVx before being shown on ITV1.

And I still can't get ITVx on my Sky Q box, but it is available on Sky Glass and Sky Stream. There were unconfirmed reports recently that Sky will stop offering new dish installations this year.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 11:16 am   #16
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
No need for a 'set top box' [why do people still call them that, I never saw one sitting on top of a telly and these days tellies are so slim that a mouse would have difficulty balancing on top of one].

Our cat had a good go at it chasing a mouse on top of the tv that infiltrated the house a few days ago (she got about half way along it before I whipped her off - really must safety tie the tv to the wall ).


Our antenna atop a 10m tower hasn't been used in years, everything else is through the 'net except the local news which comes in via satellite.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 11:39 am   #17
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

So long as there's 'waves in the skies' I'll be surfing them.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:12 pm   #18
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Digital and old analog TV aerials side by side on top of a local house. I am not sure if the old antenna is from the 80s or 90s.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:27 pm   #19
stevehertz
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jolly 7 View Post
Digital and old analog TV aerials side by side on top of a local house. I am not sure if the old antenna is from the 80s or 90s.
Being (what looks like) a combined Bands 1 & 3 aerial it could be late 50s or 60s.
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Old 28th Feb 2023, 12:27 pm   #20
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Default Re: Demise of the TV aerial.

When i moved into a new house many years ago , the local council actually forbade rooftop aerials and also white front doors!!!
It wasn't as if we were in a sensitive conservation area or a listed building as it was a brand new build.
Anyway my aerial is in the roof and works just fine but gradually more and more rooftop aerials appeared (and white front doors) so I'm guessing it was very difficult to police or enforce.

Nowadays it seems to be all rusty old sky dishes.
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