A little GEM!, January 13, 2010

By 

Melanie Arthur (Houston, TX) – See all my reviews

  

This antenna is great. I wanted to add the local HD ATSC channels to my TIVO HD. I purchased a DIGIAIR antenna meter to find the spot in my attic with the strongest signal and optimized its position. This antenna did a fantastic job on both hi-VHF and UHF bands. I am guessing it has about 4-6 dB gain on both bands. It is truely designed to reduce multipath interference for digital signal reception. For example, the rear VHF reflector is fed into the antenna feed after going through a 180 degree phase reversal to enhance rear lobe rejection of unwanted signals.

The antenna DOES come with the J mount pole which makes it an even better value.

I live 42 miles from the transmission towers and this antenna is connected to a 60 ft run of RG6 quad shield to my TV. I get a S/N ratio of 23-28 db on most all the channels with a signal strength on the TV of 80-100. The DIGIAIR meter shows strong pull on the VHF channels.

From my knowledge of antenna design and looking at photos on the internet, this antenna appears to be the same one sold for twice the price called the EZ HD Antenna.

It is just large enough to get good signal, but small enough not to be too cumbersome. It was the only combination VHF/UHF antenna in this size that I could find that had multiple VHF elements for increased gain.

Now I receive all the local channels in HD PLUS I receive analog basic cable. My TIVO HD combines both channel sets into a seamless viewing experience. HD channels viewed off this antenna will always look BETTER than if you viewed them off cable because the cable company recompresses the HD signal downgrading it slightly to save bandwidth on the cable system. You just can’t get this clarity without an antenna.

YOU DO NEED A SEPARATE RUN OF RG6 QUADSHIELD COAX TO YOUR TIVO BOX. YOU CAN’T COMBINE ANTENNA SIGNALS AND CABLE SIGNALS ON THE SAME CABLE. IT TAKES 2 CABLES TO DO THIS. Running this second cable down to my TIVO was the hardest part of the installation. After you do this, simply REMOVE the cable card from your TIVO to get the Comcast basic cable channels in analog and let the antenna handle your HD digital local channels. Saves cable bill money.

For connectors, I purchased the DataShark compression tool and compression RG6 connectors at Home Depot. I ordered additional connectors (better ones for quad shield) from Amazon. DataShark stuff is made by Paladin Tools.

I purchased the RG6Q (quad shield cable) as RCA brand quad shield at Lowes. Avoid the GE cable as it is of lower quality. Home Depot had some inexpensive QuadShield cable also, but if you look closely the center 18AWG conductor was only copper coated steel, not solid copper like the RCA cable.

For coax face plates, I made my own double gang wall plate. Using one of the “unbreakable nylon” face plates at Home Depot, I was able to drill two holes in it the perfect size to place two coax couplers. The modular data/coax/phone face plate systems from Leviton, and others are nice, but very over priced for what are custom pieces of plastic.

Most homes will be wired with RG59 coax which has a much higher loss of signal than RG6. If you installing an antenna you really need the RG6 to minimize loss of weak signals which come from an antenna. Since all the stations are now digital and digital reception is sensitive to EMI or interference, you need the quad shielded RG6 over the double shielded RG6 to reduce interference. When receiving digital signals it takes BOTH a strong signal and a CLEAN signal free of interference to get a beautiful and clean picture.

My reception is rock solid on all channels. I couldn’t be happier.

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Works great, August 28, 2009

By 

B. Brown (New Mexico, USA) – See all my reviews

  

We just moved to Santa Fe and wanted to get broadcast TV (I hate cable!) but most stations are near Albuquerque. According to [...], all of our stations are around 35-40 miles away. This antenna was very quick to install – it took my husband less than 15 minutes to install it on the roof, we then re-scanned our channels and picked up 26 digital channels. This includes all of the major broadcast channels including two PBS stations that are all crystal clear – a perfect picture. There are no trees or tall buildings around us, but there is a mountain range between us and Albuquerque so we were worried we wouldn’t be able to pick up the channels. This was a great price, the antenna is not too large and obtrusive, and it works great for both UHF and VHF channels.

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FREE HD TV Reception! What could be better?, June 28, 2010

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D. Wheeler (Utah) – See all my reviews

  

My wife and I were with Comcast for 10 years and they recently decided to make some major changes (triple the cost or only 20-30 channels almost ALL of which are local or shopping). Minor changes did take place during the time we were with them such as Price and Services (I would go into details but I would rather not bore you). We had always decided that Comcast was pretty much the only other option then Direct TV and such.

Amazingly we noticed (because Comcast wanted to make these recent major changes) that we didn’t really watch that much TV, and when we did, it was the Local Stations that we were mostly watching. We then decided to cut Comcast completely out of the picture (no pun intended), and we started to shop for an antenna. Needless to say, we found this one. Reading the reviews on both Amazon and one other web-site (apparently I can’t say which web-site that is, because “Amazon’s” people will end up deleting it from this review “[...]“) I was very excited to test this out, especially where Wal-Mart was selling this exact one for more than what Amazon was selling it for at the time I purchased it.

The installation of this antenna was simple. It is very light and perfect to work with, just make sure that you have coax cable to go with it. The HD Quality is unbelievable. There are some stations that we receive in HD that we are now getting better reception with then what Comcast was providing at the time we had them. With this antenna, we get between 24 to 30 English stations and roughly 10 to 15 Spanish stations (I would only assume it is different in each State/County).

I viewed some of the reviews on Wal-Mart’s web-site on this antenna and noticed that one reviewer had pictures where he placed this antenna in their attic. I recently finished our basement and did not want to drill more holes. I have my main connection to our Cable/TV runing next to my breaker box in our Cold Room (food Storage), and I placed the Antenna in their, a simple connection. I installed the antenna on the Ceiling of the room. I live in Utah County and we have Mountains that can easily block the signal. The closest tower for reception where I live is about 50 miles, it is also beyond the corner of one of the Mountains. Even with that and being in our basement the picture is great!

This Antenna is a must have!!! Very Simple to put together, very light and you really can stick it anywhere. I figured by putting it indoors, it will not get weather damage and should last us a very long time. Hurray for FREE TV! Also note that I do not have an Amplifier with this as other reviews do have and still getting great reception. It does make me curious though if I would get more channels or even better reception on those channels that don’t have a 100% reception on.

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