sagem hard drive recorder causing pixillation

[maclarencat]

Help please. We have a sagem hard drive recorder. Every so often through the day the picture on the television breaks up. I have rung their help desk and been told that it is caused by signal problems but we have 4 other televisions in the house which are all OK. They talked me through retuning to a nearer transmitter but it still isnt working properly. Today it has ben fine all day then 30 minutes ago it started breaking up. Their explanation was that putting the signal through the hard drive recorder weakens the signal and that is why we get this pixallation only on the one television. Is this correct or are we being fed a line? If it is true is there no solution?

[Buenchico]

The explanation offered to you sounds 100% correct to me. Your aerial system simply isn't up to the job. (If you're trying to feed 5 TVs from one aerial, without a proper amplification system in place, that would hardly be surprising!).

Ideally you need a better aerial and/or a decent (powered) distribution system. However if only one TV is suffering problems, then a simple signal amplifier (£6 from Tesco) will probably fix the problem.

Chris

[maclarencat]

Thankyou We do have a powered booster on the aerial and the aerial was only fitted 3 years ago.

[maclarencat]

Ooo just read that back and it sounds very abrupt sorry. What I really meant was thankyou Chris. Do you have any other suggestions?

[Buenchico]

All of the textbooks will tell you that you can't have two signal amplifiers in line (as they introduce too much 'noise' into the signal). My own experience, however, is that adding a second amplifier will usually fix most problems. As stated above, Tesco will sell you a reasonably good one for around £6 but this might be better. (Higher amplification, with less noise):
http://www.maplin.co....rial-amplifier-223504
(Recommended from personal experience).

Chris

[maclarencat]

Thanks Chris we will give that a try