If you have a TV in Australia and don’t use services like FOXTEL, Fetch TV, Austar, or Optus, then you are going to need to have a TV antenna in order to pick up terrestrial TV channels. So, what is a TV antenna? Let’s take a look!

 

If you have ever had a radio, whether it is on an older vehicle or in your home, then you will likely notice that there is a rather long piece of metal that sticks up from it. The purpose of this antenna is to receive those radio signals that are floating around, and then send them right through to your radio. A TV antenna is the same principle.

 

TV channels are sent out via radio signals too. The antenna works by searching for these signals. You will set your TV tuner (normally built into your TV) to tell the antenna what sort of signal it should be searching for i.e. what channel you wish to watch. Once it finds them, it will convert these radio waves into sort of an electrical current and send that current through to the tuner. The job of your tuner will be to turn those small electrical currents into a watchable TV channel.

 

The size and type of antenna that you need will be dependent on where you live. If you live in, say, Brisbane, then you will likely find that you need a smaller antenna than if you were in Stanthorpe. This is because Brisbane will likely have strong signals floating about, while Stanthorpe, not so much.

We know this is all sounds a bit complex, but it isn’t. As long as you have your TV antenna set up properly (they can be located either indoors or outdoors), then the antenna and the TV tuner will be doing all the hard work for you. All you really need to do is kick back, relax, and enjoy whatever is showing on Australian TV at the time on the gold coast.