Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot For My Application
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024
I know these are popular and work well for a lot of people, it just didn’t work for me in my application. First off the build quality is very good with the exception of the VHF Dipoles. They use U shaped brackets and a screw to secure them to the antenna body and I just never liked the way the screws felt when tightening and loosening them. A stud fixed to the body of the antenna in conjunction with a bracket and wing nut would have been better in my opinion. However, once they are locked into their horizontal spots they are not loose and do not move. I put this on my existing Dish Network J-Pole that is lagged into the header board on the back corner of my house. I was able to turn it in all directions if needed for adjustment. In the picture included you’ll see my existing antenna, it is the Philips Rabbit Ears Antenna (SDV8201B/27). I have it folded up and sitting on the top window pane in a living room window at the front of the house. This goes directly into a two way splitter, one of those goes into the living room tv right there with a 4’ piece of RG-6. The other one is connected to the previously used RG-6 cable run used for the Dish Hopper, this penetrates the outside of the house in our coat closest, runs along the side of the house around the corner and all the way to the back of the main bedroom portion of the house. Probably about 45 feet of RG-6. This used to go into the “Single Node” where the Dish Network Satellite feed came into along with the two Joeys we had. I replaced that Single Node with an identical two way splitter that I used inside the house. So the 45 foot RG-6 coming from the splitter inside the house is now the input into the two way splitter I installed in place of the Single Node, both of those outputs on the splitter feed the other two bedrooms. All three rooms have identical tv’s, 65” in the living room and 55” TV’s in each bedroom, all are Hisense UK7. With this setup and the Philips indoor antenna my Nextgen tv signal for the locals is 46. With the ClearStream 2MAX I was using an Extreme Broadband balanced three way splitter to feed all three TV’s and that dropped total signal to the living room tv to 19. This is actually fine for those Nextgen ATSC 3.0 CHANNELS as they don’t require as strong of a signal as the ATSC 1.0 CHANNELS do. The problem is everything else, the sub-channels for Fox which are VHF never did come in reliably and I had issues maintaining enough signal on UHF 20, 50 and the Nextgen stations at the same time. The ClearStream install adds about 50 feet of RG-6 to the equation (The distance to the J-Mount) and the aforementioned 3 way splitter. Of course in the Philips indoor Antenna installed we have 2-2-way splitters. So I’m not sure if the additional RG-6 is the cause of the issue or not, but either way I did not want to install a pre-amp so that limits my options. I ended up putting it back the way it was and all the channels are back with a strong, watchable signal. I’m not trying to steer anyone away from this Antenna, I think it is a quality item, it just didn’t work in my particular application.
