Question: Explain why a television reception in a place surrounded by hills is poor?

Cheryl Andisi answered on 18 Jan 2017:

@aajb355,
TV uses radio waves which are electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves travel in a straight line, which basically means that they cannot bend to go over obstacles such as the hills. For this reason, people living in a valley may not get very efficient reception especially if the transmission station is on a lower ground on the other side of the hill. In these cases, raising the TV aerial may help things a little as it may be able to receive waves.

I think this explanation fits for the analogue TVs well. However, as you may be aware, in Kenya we are moving from analogue to digital transmission and reception. Some areas like Nairobi have had analogue transmission completely stopped which means all Nairobi residents require a digital TV or devises that can change the digital content to analogue content for their TVs to use. These devices are known as set top boxes. I am not sure if digital TV uses the same radio waves because the reception of these seem to be way better.