Being the techno-geek that I am, I *have* to keep up with the latest technologies and, to be honest, being and early adopter sometimes is a hard road to follow.

I plonked my cash on the counter pretty much right away on the switch-on of the Digital TV system here in Sydney, and have been pretty much underwhelmed ever since.

Picture break ups, audio pops and induction noise are all issues that anyone relying on Digital TV in Sydney has just had to come to live with, but why is it so?

Way back in the early days of the DTV rollout in Sydney, I was having major issues with picture break ups and audio pops and made the usual 1+1 =4 mistake and went straight to the TV antenna. I got the guy out who installed it about 6 months prior as he had blazenly written across the invoice ‘Digital TV Ready’ and I was certain that he was sayig this on some loophole.

The signal was tested from the roof and pronounced to be AOK.
The antenna was tested and pronounced to be AOK.
The in house cabling was checked and pronounced to be AOK.

You guessed it, all to no avail.

So I replaced the cable from the antenna to the wall outlet with quad shielded RG6, replaced all the connectors with ‘F’ type and re-made all the fly leads with RG6 and ‘F’ type connectors for good measure.

No change.

I re-routed the RG6 from the antenna to the tv so that it went no-where near  power or light cables.

No change.

I was tearing my hair out by now as I had been playing this game for 3-4 months all while my wife is basically refusing to watch Digital TV and is watching analogue on our 42″ plasma. sigh.

Every time a light switch was flicked, a car went down the road, the guy across the road revved up his boat, another guy the street started his motor bike, anyone in the street used a power tool, or if anyone in the street mowed the lawn, the picture froze and an audible pop was heard.

I was out of ideas and out of desperation went to the local TV antenna wholesaler to see what could be done. I walk in and say, ‘I want the biggest, strongest, most powerful TV antenna for DTV that you have’. Obviously I got some bizare looks, frowns and raised eyebrows and a unanimous ‘you dont need that’.

And obviously I didnt listen and bought the second biggest, which was still double the size of what I already had.

I wrestled with the antenna mast on the house and nearly did myself a horrible injury replacing the antenna but finally got it installed. With great anticipation of what was going to be my crowning glory of the man of the house and techno-geekedry prowess, I flicked on the TV with the family gathered around.

No difference.

Still exactly the same.

Bollocks.

Anyway, this time last year we moved to a new house one suburb away, this time a double story house and it was on the top of the hill. I had great expectations of our unimpeded access to Digital TV.

Alas this was not the case.

As it turns out, I spent the best part of 2-3 years wrestling with something that wasnt my problem, but more a problem with the transmittal of DTV.

I am not sure about now, but certainly in the early days of DTV all the Sydney transmitters were runing at 50% power as to not disrupt the analogue reception. With DTV, you in theory get a perfect signal or nothing at all. Notice in theory as it isnt actually the way that it works in practice.

Digital TV signal propagates logarithmically. ie the signal degradation increases at an increasing rate so that the drop off point is very sharp. It turns out that some parts of sydney, particularly the Baulkham Hills area are right on this cut off point due to the hilly area, and this is what I was suffering from.

All I can say is roll on the Analogue system cut off so that we can get the power increased on the transmitters for DTV to a level where it gives a watchable solution, although I am not holding my breath.