Hi,
as the date draws near ( December 3 in Sydney) for all analogue TV transmitters to be switched off, many folk are now electing to finally ditch their old CRT sets in exchange for a modern, LED/LCD flat screen. Pricing is very keen and bargains are there to be had.
A neighbour bought a Sony 40 inch set a few weeks ago and was unable to get a usable pic on any channel from the communal antenna system. Previously a STB had been in use and although not perfect was usable, the pic would pixellate or freeze if an aircraft few overhead - Mascot being only a few kms away.
With the new set, this was worse than before and intolerable.
Eventually, I was allowed to have a look at the problem and it was dreadful - only a couple of UHF channels were at all usable. And this fact was the big clue.
Moving a hefty bookshelf revealed the wall outlet, a PAL female socket on a large white plate.
Closer inspection showed it was badly rusted on both the inner and outer surfaces. Removing it from the wall revealed the inner terminal was not connecting to the inner of the co-ax due to a solder crack on the small PCB while the shield of the co-ax connected to nothing due to bad design of the HPM brand plate.
Reality is, the plate had been in this condition for years and it is amazing the old STB worked at all - since it now hardy made any difference if the antenna lead were plugged in or not !!
There must be a lot of installations like this around and PAL outlet wall plates seem to be poorly made as well. Even the replacement I got from WES was not well designed in relation to reliably grounding the coax shield to the PCB and PAL outlet.
... Phil