ED is blessed in as much as we're relatively close, but not too close, to Crystal Palace - just look how far its analogue signals travel. Signal strengths should therefore be good enough for reasonable reception across most of the area, unless you've got a large building in the way to the transmitter. However, a common problem that really spoils analogue reception is ghosting, caused by signals reflecting off nearby (and not so nearby) buildings etc., but digital is unaffected by that. TV reception problems (certainly for digital) in areas like this are usually down to people trying to use crapped-out aerials, cheap aerials, or set-top aerials. Don?t forget that the quality of your aerial is as important as the TV set itself: it never fails to amaze me that people who are willing to drop a grand on a plasma TV are often unwilling to get their 1979-vintage aerial sorted out. You can't really expect to get reliable reception on a set-top aerial, as not only do the walls of the house absorb most of the signal strength, but the small size of the aerial itself means it can?t pick up most of what's left of the signals. The signals will also bounce around inside the room, giving you plenty of ghosting on analogue, and casuing some channels to 'fade'. If you do need to use an indoor aerial for whatever reason, the Telecam brand ones sold in Argos are reported to be the best performers. Anyway, digital reception will get a lot easier when the analogue signals are switched off in 2012, as they?re going to whack up the digital signal powers.
