Sky TV
When we first moved in the area on my street I noticed our house was the only one with a new outside ariel. The television reception is awful but once the tv was plugged in my wife (who is not deaf) was able to watch tv. It was a bit snowy and she could only watch 2 channels. Us deaf people need clear tv reception to receive subtitles other wise it will be ransom asterisks or letters.
I asked next door what their TV reception like and it was slightly better than mine although they use booster kit but I know subtitles will still be rubbish. She said that everyone in this street has an indoor Ariel in the attic.
So I climbed into my attic could not find an indoor ariel but saw a cable leading to outside ariel but cut in 2 pieces (as far as I can see) and a broken hack saw blade.
Obviously the people who lived here before had spent some money improving their viewing pleasure and did not want us to benefit from it.
We called a TV shop to fix the problem we were quoted £100.
We decided to go with sky and the deal is that if we go with a cheapest package it would work out £100 and after 12-month contract we cancel it and watch the free to air channels with clear reception.
Fast forward 4 years and now the sky digital box stopped working. It would cost us more than £50 for them to look at it.
So now we have 2 options we could pay £150 upfront where you have free to air TV or subscribe to Sky TV and get the cheapest package for 12 months and after that you either carry on subscribing or switch to free to air the total cost of that will be £170 so we might as well subscribe to Sky TV and get the extra channels for £20 more
Could have fixed it yourself. Put a new coax connector on both cut ends and connect them both together. Volia! Cost, £1 and 15 mins of your time. Coax cables has an outer plastic sleeve, a metal mesh under that, and a thick clear plastic inner sleeve and a copper wire in the middle. All you need to do is to slide the bottom half of the connector on the wire. Then you just need to cut back the outer plastic sleeve, move the mesh downwards (both metal bits must NOT touch each other), slide the top half of the connector on, screw the two halves together, and snip off any excess copper wire that pokes out through the tube and you’re sorted.
The connectors I’m talking about are like the below:
http://www.cybermarket.co.uk/ishop/923/shopscr2069.html
http://www.cybermarket.co.uk/ishop/923/shopscr2073.html
Thanks Piers but I have done that following advice from local Ariel tv repair shop.
It still show crap reception and I found there is more than one cut along the cable so I have to buy more connectors or get them to replace the whole cable.