Where I Live

I live in Ilkeston, a small town 9 miles west of Nottingham but situated in Derbyshire. The town is served by the Sutton Coldfield, Waltham and Kimberley (the Nottingham relay) transmitters. The strongest signals at my location (analogue and digital) come from Sutton Coldfield although I also receive reasonable signals from Waltham.

I have an Antiference aerial mounted on the house pointing towards Sutton Coldfield. It has a mast head booster providing a good analogue and digital signal from the West Midlands. I have a Band III DAB aerial in the loft which works very well indeed and provides me with a number of radio multiplexes. Click here for details. The DAB signal is now combined with the UHF one through an Antiference amplifier/ distributor and so the radio can now be used throughout the house.

I have a 100cm dish at the bottom of the garden mounted on an Omnisat positioner. I use this to receive digital and analogue signals. There is Sky + digital mini dish on the rear of the house. This has a 8 output LNB that drives the Sky + HD receiver downstairs and two standard receivers in our bedrooms.

My receivers

I have a Sky + HD digibox, and a Technomate digital receiver. The Sky + HD receiver was installed in the Summer of 2007 and works really well. It has a hard disc in it which produces excellent playback of recorded pictures. I have had a number of 'boxes' under the TVs over the years. My first receiver was an Amstrad 100 way back in February 1989. My main TV is a Hitachi 42" Plasma TV. The HD receiver and the Plasma TV has revolutionised the picture quality. As you can guess the wires at the back are horrendous! I also have a DVD recorder which I use to archive programmes recorded on the Sky + HD receiver. Recently we have had a Virgin Media cable box installed. This is producing excellent pictures. It is similar to the Sky + HD box and records about 70 hours of SD material (less for HD).

All rooms in the house are wired into the system and have either Sky Digital or Freeview receivers installed. We are certainly ready here for the Midlands analogue switch off in 2011.


The Sky HD Dish on the back of the house	The Main TV in the Lounge	The Boxes!

These two TVs above were previously in the place where the Plasma is now.