One For All Aerial with TV Signal Booster Review

We recently carried out a technical review of One For All Set Top Aerials for the 2007 Radio & TV Listeners Guide.

The One For All aerials tested were SV9310, SV9320, SV9340 and SV9350. There are several One for All aerial models with most including a wideband signal booster. Some models will receive DAB radio as well as UHF analogue TV and Freeview digital TV (DTT).

The aesthetic design of the One for All aerial range suits a chic, modern living room environment, whilst not ruling out its use as part of a loft TV aerial installation to improve Freeview reception compared to set top mounting.

One For All Aerials - Test Results

When tested in a good Freeview reception area the One for All aerials struggled to give good Freeview reception when used set top even at our test location, only 8 miles from the Hannington transmitter. Even moving them away from all sources of local interference, reception was poor. By comparison, a good log periodic set top aerial like the Telecam TCE2001 outperformed the One for All aerial by a considerable margin, having much better directivity and signal gain.

Unfortunately, the One for All aerial gave similarly poor results with DAB radio - worse in fact than using the telescopic aerial fitted as standard on our Evoke DAB radio!

Worst on test was the One for All SV9340 picture frame aerial which gave significant Freeview picture break up even in strong DTT signal areas. There was another problem too - all One For All aerials suffered from serious interference problems caused by the high gain signal booster and non existent filtering to reduce the effect of out of band interfering signals.

Even a mobile phone placed near any One for All TV aerial caused problems with picture breakup on Freeview digital TV and significant patterning on analogue TV reception. In addition, due to their small size and lack of active elements, All One for All Aerials had very poor directivity, so ghosting on analogue television reception was a big problem in urban locations surrounded by tall buildings for example.

Review Conclusion

In summary, as aesthetically pleasing as a One for All aerial may be, is no substitute for a decent loft or roof top TV aerial installation, just as a ridiculous 20dB - 40dB signal booster will not improve TV reception when fitted to any poor TV aerial. When considering the likelihood of interference, the maximum TV signal booster gain we would recommend is 15dB (a single stage aerial amplifier).

The One for All aerial range is a classic example of bad aerial design aimed at mass market appeal, just as mini HiFi still claims to be as good as separates!

Even in good reception areas, we could not achieve good Freeview reception with any One for All TV aerial due to interference pickup and lack of aerial directivity. Installing a decent loft aerial like a Triax 52 will produce vastly superior results to any One for All aerial. In fact, the CAI benchmark standard 1 and 2 Triax and Televes aerial range is available on Ebay for around the same price as a One for All TV aerial - so it's a 'no brainer' which is the best option to choose!

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