Jaycar carries a great range of “indoor” type TV antennas in both passive& active gain models, which are good quality. Many people select such products hoping that they will offer satisfactory TV reception without the cost and/or hassle of a full outdoor TV antenna system. Often people who are renting premises cannot install a full TV antenna system anyway because they are not allowed to drill holes etc. The reality, however, is that indoor TV antennas rarely give totally satisfactory results. The antenna element dimensions never correspond to broadcast frequencies for a start. Because you are inside, you may have no idea where the TV tower is anyway. Even if you knew where the tower was the antenna rarely has directional qualities. This makes the towers’ location fairly meaningless. Trying to make an indoor antenna according to the laws of physics misses the point. Despite this, indoor TV antennas can work amazingly well! Just don’t get too scientific about it. They work best when you can throw a rock and hit the TV tower. As all the channels you will want to watch will not be in rock-throwing distance, some stations will work better than others. Wiggling the antenna around is really your only available technique. Indoor TV antennas are made for flat dwellers in large Western or Asian cities with high building density. In other words, all the TV towers will not be far away.
If you live in a “spread out” city and cannot see a TV tower i.e. like most Australian and New Zealand cities, it is highly likely that an indoor antenna will not solve your reception problems. There may simply be very little signal for you to pick up. Just imagine walking into a darkened room at night. Even with your eyes wide open you see virtually nothing until your eyes adjust to the conditions. At best you can see, say the white frame of a door. You certainly would not be able to read! You would not blame your eyes because you could not see but people frequently blame an indoor TV antenna in a similar situation for “not working” (visible light and TV signals are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum).So when you buy an indoor antenna - from us or anyone else -don’t expect a lot. If you bring the product back and say “it doesn’t work”, we know that you are really blaming the messenger. You may think that our words are a bit harsh but we respect both your time and your money too much to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. The copy above relates mainly to Analogue TV systems. They are basically gone now but the need for an indoor or temporary TV antenna still exists. Let us Jaycar people take a position on this: We do not like indoor TV antennas and if we could get away with it, we would not sell them.
The behaviour of an indoor TV antenna can be ok, it can really be bizarre. If you are renting a flat and have a hopeless TV (Digital) reception you really need to get the landlord to fit a proper TV signal feed. Good Luck. The TV Signal is still R.F. however, although digitally encoded. This means that the indoor antenna is still capable of picking up the radio frequency signal and converting it into a signal voltage. In all likelihood the antenna will pick up several versions of the R.F. signal at once. This is because R.F. being R.F. will have made its way to your antenna via several paths. It will be up to the front end of your TV receiver to distinguish the strongest signal and ignore the others. Modern TV front ends are pretty good at this. So if you are in a rented flat and want to watch TV try one of our indoor antennas. Ours are as good as or better than anyone else’s. If you are not happy with the performance of the antenna, keep the packaging, your receipt and bring it back to us if you feel you have to. Just don’t tell us that …”it does not work…” You will get your money back all right, but you might get a blank stare.
