I live on the plains outside of Houston and my '70s vintage attic-mounted antenna gives me shaky OTA reception on some local HD channels. I have been looking around for a reasonably small, more modern antenna to replace it with. I ran across one that looks promising here:

[Link: dealnews.com]


I was wondering what some of the more expert posters might think of this unit before I risk the $60 to order one. Any advice would be appreciated.

Stay away from that one. Most of the stations in Houston appears to be in the UHF band except CBS, PBS and an NBC affiliate so you will probably have to consider an antenna that has good performance on UHF and Hi - VHF (7-13). The antenna in the attic might be VHF only and hence the poor results but if I were you I might check that first , maybe the "old" antenna is still worth it but the line feeder could even be the old plain twinlead not the coaxial we use now.

check www.tvfool.com or www.antennaweb.org for a list of TV stations viewable in your area. the plains outside of houston as you described your location is too broad for us to help you further.

Usually FTA SAT stores and Electronic stores carry several types of antennas, some are chineese clones. Talk to your local store and see what they have.

Thanks for the input. I guess i should have added that I am roughly 25 - 35 miles from the majority of the transmission towers for the stations I am trying to watch. Terrain is basically flat. The old antenna was fine for both UHF and VHF in the analog era. Since the changeover I have had difficulty with the digital stations in the 20 - 39 range, while 2 - 13 and 51 - 55 seem to be fine. The old antenna is a standard beam type about 6 feet long and the downlead is old style flat twin lead, not coax. Unfortunately, the downlead runs through the walls down to the living room where my multiswitch is (originally a C-Band setup) and I would have to run new coax on the outside of the house to replace it.

Hi gbking...I would not waste my money on this antenna. I bought a similar model made by Antenna Nation. It looks very similar to the one in your post and I only paid $15.00 CDN for it. The price was right since I couldn't tune in a single HD station. I went out and tried a simple flat 4 bay antenna for a similar price and was able to pick up 3 channels easily with the unit sitting in a chair in the living room. I am about 40 miles from the closest digital broadcast north of Toronto.

Hi Kevmakeck, I was thinking of buying one of these as I saw them for 15$ also. That's Cdn$ so about 14$USD Houston.

Are you saying it is truly useless? Does the rotator turn it at least?

It is not totally useless since I used one even in the basement (mind you I only watch certain TV stations not all available and they are all close). Heck even my finger touching the center conductor will work for CBC HD!!!. But more often than not it will not be the ideal solution for most people. I acctually prefer a solution that has the pre-amp independent of the antenna. In most cases , unless you are a true dxer, just the antenna at the proper location (height) will be enough. If needed more then add the amp but it will always give you that flexibility. Built-in amp on such cheap antennas are not high quality at all but like any VHF/UHF antenna system it will always work to some extend under certain conditions (the OP has not given us enough info).

In any case the OP will have to replace the transmition line (twinlead now) or run new ones through other places and attic installed antennas last almost forever so Why not insist on using the one in the attic instead?. Maybe relocate it outside?. Maybe I am too cheap , who knows, lol.

This is a very cheaply made antenna. I certainly would not trust it outside, especially with our Canadian winters. The instructions are not very useful either. The pre-amp has a coax input marked "ANTENNA" which you attach to the single input on the antenna. This does turn the rotor when you press the button. There is then a coax coming out of the pre-amp unit that is marked "TV" which I attached to my television and could not get even a ghost of analog, let alone HD for that matter. There is also curiously another coax output on the pre-amp unit that is blank...my thinking is that this should be attached to the exterior of the antenna somewhere but there are no real leads found nor is it mentioned in the instructions. Very disappointing but understandable considering the price.

I'd first replace the old twin lead with some good RG-6. When reception improves (trust me, it will) you may not even need a new antenna!

Yes, it may be costly, or take a lot of time, or look like hell, but that twin lead doesn't even have a useful life of from then to now. That is, if it were the perfect wire, it would have aged too much to depend on. Especially if any of it is in touch with the atmosphere :)

We might be able to help with working out how to run the cable in your house if it doesn't look obvious to you.

I think one may be hard pressed to proclaim that they got what they paid for in this antenna.