Recently my apartment building decided to change the TV antenna system because of the latest upgrade of TV broadcasting to the DVB-T2 (Digital Video Broadcasting – Second Generation Terrestrial) standard.
My 10-year-old samsung LCD TV stopped receiving signals during last summer. Surprisingly, my TV was known to support the new digital broadcast signal, and also the shutdown of the old systems was already in place.
I therefore agreed to the antenna change, proposed by some condominiums.
The antenna installer, commissioned by the building manager, instead of changing the antenna, as I would have expected, decided to change only the antenna preamplifier, leaving me the old amplifier as a souvenir, and the box for the new amplifier.
Magically, my old TV went back to tuning all DVB-T2 channels correctly.
So far only the good news.
I then wanted to test my radio to make sure of the job done, since with the precendete amplifier, I could only jam the TV signal in certain frequencies, and exceeding the 200 W PEP.
Instead, to my immense amazement, I found that with only 5W of power on any HF band I could completely cancel the TV signal.
Terrified by this, and in disbelief as to what was going on, I began to document myself on the net and ask colleagues and in the fari forums.
Following everyone’s advice, I first informed the administrator, requesting a review of the amplifier, and then wrote directly to the Belgian manufacturer, of the TV amplifier reporting the anomaly.
The amplifier in question, about which I do not want to give bad publicity, is one of those self-programmable ones, very small, and evidently unshielded. The manufacturer immediately replied to me asking about the power output of my transmissions and frequencies, and saying that he would inform the technical department.
In the meantime I asked the administrator, for a replacement with another product that was shielded, and in fact in the following days the antenna technician, replaced the product with a TERRA PA420T and the problems magically disappeared.
Of course, this cost me the antenna specialist’s intervention to replace the TV amplifier.
A few days ago, I was contacted again by the Belgian manufacturer, even proposing to do a test with the modified version of their amplifier, to see if they had solved the problems. Of course, I declined.