pbd HDTV Antenna Digital Antenna Amplified Outdoor Antenna 120 Mile Range For VHF and UHF Band

I did not expect much from this antenna and thought at this price I can give it a shot. I mounted it on the gable of a smaller single family house. I routed the cable with the signal amplifier into a kitchen cabinet that also had an outlet. from there i used a 4 way splitter to feed the signal to 4 different tvs. Initially the amplifier was dialed down too much but when I adjusted the gain the signal came in great. I really like the fact that the amplifyer can be adjusted for optimal performance. The local broadcast antenna is about 50 miles from my house and the signal is great. Two stations have a slightly different location but I was able to adjust the antenna to a point between them and still able to get both of them tuned in. If you want to get signal from towers in opposite directions you either have to combine two separate antennas or you may want a multidirectional antenna. One thought is that the antenna does not come with a mounting bracket. In the picture you see how I used a mounting bracket recycled from an old satellite dish. If you do not have an existing pole you are using you may want to start looking for something suitable or buy one. If you love to recycle things talk to any roofing company. They take down unused satellite dishes all the time. they can be used for vertical and horizontal mounting. The antenna did not made the appearance of being the most sturdy one but really at this price it provides absolutely fantastic value. If you have the opportunity to mount this high in clear shot to the broadcasting towers it is the ideal solution for free over the air TV programming. Most metropolitan areas have dozens of channels with all the large networks broadcasting. If you are missing the functionality of a DVR check out PLEX as a great replacement of your cable providers DVR. I flip houses and Install antennas as a feature all the time. Whenever I show buyers the possibilities without an expensive cable bill they are thrilled. If you are renovating make sure you have coax cable (Antenna Cable) going where you want to place a TV. This antenna requires the use of a power outlet within a reasonable distance from the antenna. Most attics have an attic light and I have used that electrical source in the past to add an outlet in the attic to serve the amplifier as a power source. Great little antenna package.

I bought this in hopes of replacing an old DB4 antenna with a VHF kit on it. My thought was to simplify my antenna setup with one neat little package. I installed this in the same location as the DB4 which receives 41 channels and used the known good RG-6 feed line. I only got about 15 channels. I fiddled with the aim and the gain settings, made sure the LED on the power supply and antenna were working but nothing seemed to help. So, what the heck, I disassembled the new antenna. I found the internal coax cable leading to the UHF elements crushed because it was under a plastic reinforcement when assembled. With an ohm meter I checked and found poor connections to the aluminum UHF antenna plates which were just placed on top of the wires and screwed down with no dielectric grease between the AL and CU. So I cleaned the connections, applied a little grease, and verified good contact and no shorts in the coax cable. I carefully reassembled the unit and gave it another try. It was better but not much. I suspect the quality of the electronics is not much better than the build quality because as others here have said it works better just connected without using the preamp.I will keep the thing as it was and is CHEAP, I probably voided the warranty anyway, and it might possibly be used in an emergency or hacked in some manner to make a decent antenna out of it. Maybe I got a bad one but after looking at the internals...I would not recommend this particular model to others.

Read "Old Engineer"s" review and as yet another old engineer pretty much agree with his assessment.I live 8 miles from the main Philadelphia towers and have a Mohu leaf hooked up to an old RCA 4 way amplified splitter. With that setup I get all of the channels that broadcast from that location reasonably well. Channel 6 often has pixelation. Surprisingly I get channel 2 better even though the Mohu is not really a VHF antenna.Was hoping I could put the PBD antenna in my attic and use i for all four TVs in my house.Never got around to it. Now that we're all home more, I took it out again. Used the manual channel selection feature on my LG TV to check the channels. Sat the antenna on a tray table pointed at the same wall that the Mohu is mounted on.Got a better result than the Mohu on Channel 6 but only two other channels came in at all. Suspected from this that only the VHF element was working.Since I'm way out of warranty, I figured that I had nothing to lose by taking the antenna apart. Hard to tell until you've fully disassembled the antenna what's going on. However, I suspect that the uhf elements weren't making good contact with wih the cable that connects back to the pre-amp board.I will probably get out my soldering iron and heat up the connections between the antenna elements and the preamp board. And make sure on reassembly that everything is making good contact. For my application this antenna should work. Unless, of course, the preamp is no good.

I was pleased to find that this works very well for me. I'm in an area that can't get any channels reliably with a small unamplified antenna near the TV. If I elevate an unamplified antenna I can get a couple of channels. However, with this antenna placed on a closet shelf, and facing in one direction, I am able to get 41 channels perfectly.One always has to remember that these amplified antennas, are not magic and can't receive a signal that is not getting there. But if you are close enough to get a signal, but that signal is too weak to drive the TV, the amplifier does the trick, especially if you can elevate the antenna on a closet shelf, in the attic or on the roof.Also, I happen to be lucky that all the channels in my area are either to the east or the the northeast. Hence, one direction works for me. Others might need to use a rotor to turn the antenna, or manually turn it.