The AEI Digisender.

Partially rewritten & updated 16th October 2007

The Digisender is a great accessory which enables you to distribute tv signals around the house without the hassle of running extra cabling through the walls. It's manufactured by a company called AEI Security.

Similar units are now available from several other manufacturers, although I haven't used any of them.

They uses wireless technology, and runs at a radio frequency of 2.4 Ghz. They are completely legal to use in the UK, unlike some of the early products which put signals illegally onto a uhf tv channel.

I originally used mine with a DTT ITV Digital box. However, the ITV Digital pay tv service was terminated at the end of April 2002, and we swapped over to Sky Digital. The digibox is a Pace Sky+ box (the old Grudig GDS 3000 expired earlier this year), and I'm pleased to report that the Digisender works fine with this unit.

Argos sell Digisenders for about £80 with 1 receiver. They also now sell transmitter & 2 receiver combinations.

The Digisender from AEI Security.

How to set it up.

It is just a few minutes work the set the units up. You open the box and you've got two small black plastic boxes. A transmitter and a receiver. You plug the transmitter unit into your satellite receiver. You then plug the transmitter into the mains, turn the box on using the switch on the back and it starts transmitting on 2.4Ghz. The transmitter scart plug has a pass-through on it, so you dont need  an additional scart socket on your satellite box.

The receiver box plugs into the scart socket on the back of your second tv. Plug it into a mains socket, switch it on, and set your tv to its AV channel. And if everything has been set up right, your satellite tv channel will appear on your second tv. Digisenders pass full stereo sound, and rgb colour signals, and have a claimed range of about 100m if there isnt anything between them. In practise, the actual range is about 25m through walls, although what you get out of it will vary depending on what the walls of your house are made of.

How do you change channels on the satellite box, if you are in a different room from it ? The transmitter has a short (1m) "magic eye" cable. This runs from a socket on the back of the transmitter, to a small box with a glass lens on it. The lens has to be placed close to the infra red remote control signalling port on the front of the satellite box. You can then use your original remote control with the second tv, and the boxes relay the commands to the satellite receiver.

More than one tv ?

If you want to distribute signals to more than one tv, you can get additional receiver units. As long as all the receive units are set to the same channel as the transmitter (see below) then you will get the signals.

Problems ?

The Digisenders are not supplied with rf modulators. This means that if your second tv does not have a scart socket, you can't use it straight out of the box. However, you can buy an rf modulator from satellite & electrical suppliers.

If by some chance your next door neighbour has a Digisender too, there could be problems with you picking up each others signals. This can be solved by changing the transmitter channel. There are 4 channels that can be used, and the channels are set by dip switches on the back of the boxes.

You should also be aware that there is a security implication should you use this system to transmit porn programmes around the house. Anyone within range and with their receive box set to the same channel as your transmitter box will be able to see your tv signals. You have been warned!

The SCART pass-through on the transmitter box means you will have to have slightly more room at the back of the satellite decoder than before. You will need about 2 inches extra space, which wont be a problem for most people, but if space is tight you might have to move the decoder forward slightly.

The weight of the second scart plug on the pass-through on the transmitter plug causes the plugs to droop a bit. This doesnt seem to cause any problems here though.

Just satellite?

Not at all. This is the beauty of this system. Because the transmitter has a scart socket, it can be linked into any piece of equipment that has a scart. Therefore, you send signals from your DVD player, ITV Digital box, analogue and digital satellite systems, Sky Digital, or your video player. Very flexible indeed.

What do I think?

I like my Digisender. I wish I'd bought one sooner, as I can now watch late night Eurosport programming in bed. The picture is very good, and the sound is fine too. As the boxes relay the infra red remote commands, I can put my Sky Digital box into standby when I want to go to sleep, without having to run downstairs to switch it off. Comments on the newsgroups recently have also been very favourable.

Newsgroup deliberations (updated May 2002)

Over the months since I originally put this page up, there has been much discussion about the Digisenders on the TV related newsgroups. The information in this section is a compilation of some of the comments Ive noted as especially useful.

• The don't like heavy stone or metal reinforced walls, but are fine in less solid (more modern) houses

• They can be directional so need accurate aerial pointing. If the signal suffers interference when you use the remote control, chances are the aerials need tweaking a bit. Try keeping the aerials as vertical as possible. The signals transmitted between the boxes can be very poor if one of the aerials is a few degrees off.

• They can be interrupted by movement in the line of transmission, e.g. humans or animals, especially when used over longer distances. When the movement stops the interference subsides.

• They dont work with all electronic equipment, especially ITV Digital receivers. (I offered the person who posted this comment the opportunity to elaborate further for the website, but never heard anything else. Mine worked fine with an ITV Digital receiver). Buy from Argos, and use the 16 day money back deal if it doesn't work properly for you.

• They can get major interference if used in an area with a microwave oven.

• If you want a second receiver, its hopeless trying to buy from AEI direct. You are better off getting a second complete set from Argos, or buying the 2 receiver version in the first place.

• Can have problems with a computer wireless LAN - interference when its base access point transmitter is in same room as a Digisender receiver. No interference at all when wireless LAN transmitter is in same room as the Digisender transmitter.

• The receiver doesnt pass NTL handset codes.

• There seems to be problems with some of the more recent batches. I've seen several comments that folks have had to return theirs to Argos for replacement because the receive unit doesnt pass the IR commands back to the digibox.

• Martin Pickering at his Satcure website has more info about these units.

However, generally, the overall feeling about them is positive. There have been a few negative posts about them, although almost everyone has been very pleased with their sender.

24th May 2002 update: This comment from Simon Johns

"I bought the AEI digisender and although the Sound and Vision are both excellent, the remote relay does not operate. It seems that Telewest use PACE 4000 boxes now to compliment their Liberate 1.2 software. These boxes use IRDA remotes rather than the standard IR. In view of this there is currently no video sender on the market that will work with a digital cable Pace box. AEI are working on a new remote sender that can be purchased separately, but it is not out yet."

30th July 2002 update. This comment from Jon Prince about widescreen switching signals.

I managed to find a support email for AEI (support@aeisecurity.com). They said that the widescreen switching signal is not transmitted by the DigiSender. It will do what I want but I will have to manually switch modes which is a slight hassle. Auto switching would be much nicer.

29th April 2003 update: This comment from Paul Voysey:

I have just got into this area and have discovered that AEI are now making a Digisender Gold which does cope with the IRDA of the Telewest PACE boxes. Still shipping in limited quantities though.

Thanks Paul. Anyone with any more info about this is welcome to send their observations in.

Update 24th April 2003.

Well its been about 18 months since I first bought an AEI Digisender, and it's time I put some more ideas up about how the unit has performed over the last year or so. I still use the unit a lot - in fact, I have been out and bought another one! Transmitter 1 is connected to the Sky Digibox. Transmitter 2 is connected to my Dreambox. Receiver 1 is on the tv in the kitchen. Receiver 2 is on the tv in the bedroom. This means that just by changing the dips on the back of the unit in the bedroom, I can now watch Sky, or European tv in bed :-)

I have discovered one or two minor problems now I'm using them more:

When I'm using the Digibox, there is a distinct buzz on the audio when either the Sky EPG, or the Now & Next is showing on the screen.

They dont seem to like pictures with a lot of white in them - this can cause the centre part of picture to "smear" across the screen.

Pictures with digital overlays can cause some strange effects on the vision, and a slightly annoying buzz on the audio.

Update 16th October 2007.

I had an email from Chris Avery at AEI saying their site is being updated and so decided it was about time this page was updated too.

Both my Digisenders are still in regular use, although having gone over to broadband a couple of years ago I have discovered that I have problems with our wifi router and the digisenders causing mutual interference.....

I see from the Digisender website there is a new range callec the X4 which connects to 4 AV sources and has a remote control. Looks very neat and Id like one of these units - maybe when one of my current digisenders expires... These works with the IrDA commands used with cable tv boxes according to the website..

You can see the current digisender range here:  http://easylife.com/catalog

Anyone else with comments, updates etc is welcome to send them in.

Anyone who has any comments about Digisenders, especially problems with them, is welcome to contact me at ross AT analoguesat.co.uk (put Digisender in your subject line so I see it in amongst the 100's of spam messages I get for shady financial transaction from Nigerian women desperate to give me millions of pounds or dozens of banks I dont have an account with wanting me to confirm my login details!) and I'll update this page further. I dont want to mislead anyone with my review, so you have the opportunity to update the review further.

Web sites.

The manufacturer websites can be found at:

www.digisender.net  

www.aeisecurity.com

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