MyBroadband bought two indoor television antennas to see if the more expensive “digital” antenna was worth the price difference but ended up not being able to watch anything with either antenna.

South Africa’s digital migration is finally nearing completion, which means that the older analogue TV broadcasts are being shut down.

The SABC has switched off its analogue TV signals in five provinces — Northern Cape, North West, Mpumalanga, Free State, and Limpopo.

In provinces like Gauteng, where analogue broadcasts are still available, state signal distributor Sentech broadcasts digital terrestrial TV alongside the old signal.

Digital signals offer better quality and make better use of the available radio frequency spectrum, freeing up space that cellular network operators can use.

Some of this “digital dividend” was included in industry regulator Icasa’s March spectrum auction.

Consumers can access these TV channels if their TV has a built-in digital tuner or a decoder-like set-top box to convert digital broadcasts into a signal older TVs can display.

An antenna is also needed as it was with analogue TV, and many new antennas are marketed explicitly for digital TV.

MyBroadband bought an older style “bunny ears” antenna and a more modern indoor antenna marketed specifically for digital TV.

We tested these antennas on two different TVs at different locations in Pretoria and Centurion to try and view the digital channels but were unable to do so with either antenna.

The best reception we achieved still only allowed us to view some of the analogue channels, with no digital channels coming up in the scans.

On the analogue signals we did pick up, the image was so noisy that we could barely make out which channel we were watching by the logo in the corner of the screen, but we could not figure out what show was playing.

The two antennas made little difference to what we could pick up, and swopping them out after tuning into a specific analogue channel did not change the quality we were able to get.

The newer antenna has much more adjustment options, with moving bits and pieces. Still, this did not significantly improve the image quality, and the old bunny ears were easier to set up overall.

The new antenna states that it has a range of up to 5km, which should be enough to get good reception.

Based on government gazettes with broadcast tower locations, the closest tower to one of the locations we tested was within 3km.

It seems that an outside antenna may be necessary to get good enough reception in many areas.

Instead of a fixed outside TV antenna, most consumers would opt for a dish which would allow watching satellite services such as DStv and OpenView, which would open more options.

analogue switch-off Broadcasting Digital Migration (BDM) digital terrestrial television (DTT) Headline

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