UKC

New house doesn't have a TV aerial and we need one.

I'm pretty sure I bought a Tristar one from B&Q before, but left it in the old house. Screwfix seems to have the same design for half the price.

We did get a bit of pixellation, but not sure if that was the aerial or just poor line of sight to the nearest transmitter, as it was mounted in the loft - and I'm planning on doing the same here. It did have a signal booster fitted, after getting a local installer out to advise, which helped, but didn't cure the problem completely.

Any recommendations for a good aerial, before I get the pros out to advise?

Read this https://www.aerialsandtv.com/knowledge/aerials/basic-aerial-theory-facts.  Then buy what you need from them and get busy.  Buy decent cable - the stuff that actually has metal in it rather than the pale imitations that household DIY stores sell for the same price.  Work out where the most suitable transmitter is, get a compass and point the antenna in the right direction.

I bought a high gain aerial, kit form with 10m attached cable which was just sufficient to run up outside of house. Maplins, now defunct of course. Easy to attach to old table in loft and works fine through concrete tiles (no troubles with high winds now), just pointed it in same direction as neighbouring aerials and fiddled a bit to optimize. Didn't need a booster even through tiles, however our area has strong signal.

I found that very helpful when I bought a new aerial a few years back (from them, because I could - and it really wasn't any more expensive than just picking one at random from B&Q or somewhere). 

It turned out that I didn't need a lot of gain because I could actually see the transmitter, a couple of miles away, from my roof and having too much might actually have been a bit counterproductive.
My aerial does seem to be a fair bit smaller than most of my neighbours and it's always worked perfectly.

In particular, as well as pointing the thing in the right direction it helps to know whether the polarisation of the transmitter you're aiming at is vertical or horizontal.

Thanks, useful site.

The house already has the cable run internally from the socket in the lounge into the loft, it's just not attached to anything yet. I'd rather not try and replace it just yet.