Topic: If Your TV Receptions On the Blink and You Fancy A Curry

[Peripatetic Phil]

So, it's not technically wrong to market something as a digital dish/antenna, especially if you're aiming at people that have had their setup for ages. Apart from that it's marketing, of course.

Although I might nit-pick on a little of the preceding, in general one does indeed need a universal LNB if one is to be able to access all the digital transponders as well as the (very few) analogue transponders that are still in existence.  But I cannot go along with the last part -- there is no such thing as a digital dish, or a digital antenna/aerial :  I am still using /exactly/ the same 90cm dish for digital satellite reception as I used for analogue, and the only reason I changed the LNB was to go to quad from twin monobloc (my original LNB was, of course, universal, since the need for those arose during the analogue-only era).

** Phil.

[Peripatetic Phil]

More on "Digital aerials for the Gullible" (from Martin Pickering's "Satcure" web log) --

An eBay seller is offering an omnidirectional aerial and alleging 96dB gain!

It's a "digital HD TV indoor and outdoor antenna/aerial".

Bearing in mind that, by definition, an omnidirectional (= 360 degree) aerial always has a gain of less than unity (<1) even 0.96dB would be optimistic. So suggesting that it's a hundred times higher must surely be fraudulent. Even if it incorporated a high gain amplifier, 100 x (<1) is still less than one - plus a lot of amplifier noise.

Amazingly, this seller has NO negative feedback so the darn thing must pick up a signal. It makes me wonder whether I should drop a coil of wire into a plastic deodorant bottle, glue it to a magnetic base and sell it as a 1000 dB antenna.

"We have a very low antenna returns rate (approx 1 in 17)"

That's nearly six percent. If I had that return rate on any product, I'd stop selling it (and I have done so on a few products).

Of course they can get away with this because, in many parts of the UK, you can pick up a signal with a coat hanger. However, a coat hanger doesn't cost

[Willyeckerslike]

So much negativity towards a guy who really tried to make a go of a "curry business" on a curry forum!
Good luck in your new venture Julian

[StoneCut]

I totally agree, Willyeckerslike.