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Original poster

No rooftop aerial - ideas

33 replies

Trickytricky · 03/07/2015 20:06

Hi all,

We've just moved into a new house and there doesn't appear to be an aerial on the roof. There is an aerial point in the wall and I've plugged the TV into but no picture. Although our TV is old and we don't have a freeview box - is that why there is no picture? Having gone outside I can't see an aerial on the roof.

What would people do? We had planned to buy a new smart TV and just use freeview rather than pay for cable/sky freeview. We haven't got a new TV yet so is that why we can't get a picture? I assume without an aerial on the roof we are going to struggle to get a picture on freeview

OP posts:

Original poster

Trickytricky · 03/07/2015 20:08

Can you pay to have a rooftop aerial installed or could we use an indoor one? Any tips?

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dragonfly007 · 03/07/2015 20:11

We have no roof aerial and rely on sky !

bayrans · 03/07/2015 20:13

You can buy indoor aerial from home base/Argos both digital and analogue.
I'd rather get an Aerial installed though which you'll pay for, maybe £70-150?
Did you move into a brand new house? We did and were completely miffed that it didn't have a roof aerial!

hellhasnofurylikeahungrywoman · 03/07/2015 20:17

Use this map to determine if you need to switch over to a digital service. We have an aerial inside our loft space, have you checked there isn't one there?

Original poster

Trickytricky · 03/07/2015 20:18

Not a brand new house. I thought all old houses had aerials so a bit confused that there isn't one. If I did have a rooftop aerial would I just need to plug in the aerial to the TV? Or do you need a freeview enabled TV or a set top box?

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MrsTrentReznor · 03/07/2015 20:18

We got an amazon fire box and watch TV via the Internet.
I'm very happy with the setup. I've got amazon prime, so if there is nothing on TV there is loads to watch.

redbinneo · 03/07/2015 20:23

Is there an aerial in the loft?
How did you watch TV before?

hellhasnofurylikeahungrywoman · 03/07/2015 20:24

If you are in a Freeview area you need a TV capable of receiving Freeview or a set-top box

PerspicaciaTick · 03/07/2015 20:26

We have an aerial in the loft. We've added a booster box to it and it is much more convenient than having it on the roof.

Original poster

Trickytricky · 03/07/2015 20:30

MrsTrent - can you watch normal live TV? Or can you only watch the catch up (iplayer, 4oD etc)?

Red - I haven't looked in the attic. Would it look like an outdoor aerial?

Hellhasnofury - but if there is no rooftop aerial presumably I'll never get a picture? It's quite hard to see the whole of the roof...

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Original poster

Trickytricky · 03/07/2015 20:31

Pers - where would I buy the aerial? Think this is a good idea..

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PerspicaciaTick · 03/07/2015 20:33

We got everything we needed from Maplin.

Snooksbury · 03/07/2015 20:39

One way could be to do Sky for a year and then cancel, then get Freesat using the dish the sky person installed (like freeview just uses a satellite instead of an aerial). Or just pay someone to install either a satellite dish or aerial.

Pipbin · 03/07/2015 20:42

I thought the whole country switched over to digital, and the analogue signal switched off, a few years ago.

Can you get cable where you are? We haven't had an aerial in years.

LittleBearPad · 03/07/2015 20:51

There's no analogue signal being transmitted anymore so regardless of whether there's an aerial or not your old TV won't work without a digital free view box or equivalent. A new TV would work if the aerial is there as it will be digital.

You can have aerials installed. Or the previous occupants may have had cable.

PiratePanda · 03/07/2015 20:59

Check and see if there's an aerial in your loft. It may be disconnected - the people who owned our house before us took the aerial circuit with them when they left, so ours wasn't connected to the cable.

In our previous house, no aerial, we payed for the most basic cable package with Virgin. It was awesome.

Or you can just watch live TV via broadband on your computer. You still need a TV license.

ChunkyPickle · 03/07/2015 21:02

Chromecast or Amazon fire.

We don't have sky or an aerial - we watch on demand from one of the many players, or live from iplayer (we pay a license for this)

Netflix covers plenty more stuff for 6.99 a month, or NowTV for Sky - spend the money saved on a good fibre connection instead.

shabbycaddy · 03/07/2015 21:54

Not impossible if it's a relatively new house that it had been pre wired for tv, with the cable for an aerial coiled up in the loft near the loft hatch, you can then install an aerial in the loft space or outside and connect up.

wowfudge · 03/07/2015 22:13

We moved into a 1930s house a few years ago: no roof aerial. The people there before us had cable but we have a Humax pvr so had a roof aerial fitted. We also had a phone line installed - bad past experience with cable in our area.

We did survive a few days with an indoor digital area, but the signal very much depends where you are and if there's anything which can interfere, like train line electrics nearby in our case. We had an aerial with two lines fitted.

TheAuthoress · 03/07/2015 22:34

We have no outdoor aerial, there was a sky dish installed when we moved in so I assume the people before us had sky. We have indoor aerials on all three of our tv's - took a bit of faffing about with positioning and had to reset the freeview box but it's grand.

We have two cheapies from argos and one expensive one - it's the most rubbish one so we can only use it in our loft conversion.

wowfudge · 04/07/2015 07:31

Btw the Humax box is a 'personal video recorder' with a digital receiver so we get all the Freeview channels and it has a hard drive for recording. You can do series record and record two channels while watching a third, etc. There's no subscription, just buy it and plug it in.

sanfairyanne · 04/07/2015 07:38

if you unscrew the aerial socket you can see if there is a cable behind it. aerial could be in the loft.

eurochick · 04/07/2015 07:38

Our aerial is in the loft. You will still need a digibox if you don't have one integrated in your TV.

DoloresLandingham · 04/07/2015 10:22

Where have you moved from? Did your TV work without a separate freeview box there? If so, your telly must have a digital tuner; as pp have said, the 'digital switchover' has happened so there is no longer an analogue signal. You could ask a friend with a freeview box to bring it over so that you can plug it in and check.

Original poster

Trickytricky · 04/07/2015 14:36

Dolores that's a great idea! I will be on the hunt for a friend with a freeview box. We didn't have freeview at last house - we had Virgin. We were just planning on saving money and using freeview instead now!

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