Indoor aerials pros and cons

The indoor aerials we tested really did vary. All of them can receive digital TV if you have a strong enough signal – that is, you live near a transmitter and your TV room happens to face it with a clear path.

However, when it comes to medium and weak signals – which you are much more likely to have – some indoor aerials perform a lot better than others.

Also many had other problems – like cables that were too short to put your aerial up high for better reception, or weak joints or loose screws. A few tended to topple over because they were top heavy or had heavy cables.

No guarantee

One thing is clear. There’s no guarantee that any of the indoor aerials we tested will enable you to receive digital TV in every room in your home. You may get some groups of stations but not others. Or some groups with the aerial in one position, and others by moving it a bit.

Whether or not you get a really good picture will depend on several things, such as where you live, where your windows are and where in the room you put the aerial.

But it will also depend on your choice of aerial. So check out our results before you go shopping.

Will my indoor aerial work?

There is one rule of thumb. If you currently get a good, clear analogue picture with an indoor aerial, you stand a fairly good chance of doing so for digital. But you may have to upgrade that indoor aerial.

If you don’t currently get a good clear signal, you’re unlikely to with digital TV. Instead of the snowy picture you sometimes get with analogue signals, with digital you can go from a good picture to none at all very quickly.

Setting it up

We found that it was often much more difficult setting up an indoor aerial for digital TV, particularly if the digital box or iDTV was new and not already tuned in. For some useful hints for how to go about this, see Setting up - aerials tuning.

For all the model by model test results on indoor aerials, see Indoor aerials test reports.