Philex SLX 32DW TV Aerial

The Philex SLX 32DW is a low cost high gain tv aerial suitable for receiving Freeview/DVB and analogue broadcasts in medium to strong reception areas. The Philex SLX 32DW is essentially a modern 12db gain aerial with a PCB Balun with 8 element reflector that can either be mounted on the roof or in the loft.

The Philex SLX 32DW is a CAI benchmark 3 aerial which retails for £19.99 as a kit and comes complete with brackets, 10m of superior RG6 foam insulated shielded cable, cable clips and instructions. As this was going to be a DIY install on property about 20 muiles south west of the Bilsdale transmitter in North Yorkshire, it was decided that the The Philex SLX 32DW be installed in the loft as this makes for the easiest install from a safety point of view to installer (ie me and my fear of heights) and should not effect signal strength too much given the relatively close proximity to the transmitter station. It will also give the aerial a longer life and should also give a good idea of how well the aerial can perform.

Before installing a new aerial, it is always worth noting where the majority of aerials in your street point (or rather should point in some cases) as this will give you a rough idea of where your aerial should point followed by a bit of research on the internet to confirm the nearest transmitter. I also had in my possession the tv signal strength meter which was featured last week on this site and is a must for anyone wanting to install their own aerial.

It took about five minutes to find the best position to install the Philex SLX 32DW in the loft, making sure I kept the cable length as short as possible by installing the aerial in the loft directly above where the TV sat in the lounge below. Once the optimum position has been finalised the aerial can be attached to a wooden beam and the cable fed either through a pre-drilled hole in the wall or as in my case through a side wall vent so that it hung down to the road. On the ground floor there was already a co-ax socket face plate to which old cable was being fed through the wall. This was removed and the new RG6 cable from the new aerial used in its place. A quick check on the TV signal meter confirmed I was receiving the same signal strength at both ends of the cable (60 db/uV). Once the exterior cable was tacked in place to the outer wall, I could then test the picture quality.

It was very reassuring after a re-scan of the Digital set top box, that the new aerial found over 100 channels and signal quality to the TV was between 70-80% and strength between 45-70%. The picture quality was excellent and there was no pausing or "digital skips". The analogue reception was just as good, in fact it makes you realise just how good analogue reception is with a decent aerial and when watching a high quality broadcast such as yesterday's Super Bowl on BBC, the picture was actually preferable on the analogue due to the presence of clearly visible MPEG artefacts on the Digital signal when watched on a 42" LCD screen. Analogue TV just simply does not suffer these problems and it will really be a sad day in Yorkshire when signal is finally switched off in 2011. Yes, standard Digital TV has the red button, EPG and more channels but does not perform as well when the weather conditions are poor or when watching sport such as Match of the Day.

To sum up, the Philex SLX 32DW offers easy set up with everything you need to install coupled with excellent picture quality and at under twenty pounds offers very good value. The Philex SLX 32DW aerial kit is available from various outlets including Argos.

This entry was posted on Monday February 2nd, 2009 at 1:00 PM and is filed under Accessories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are now closed.