Terk 60 Mile Range High Performance Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna - Supports UHF, VHF 1080 HDTV Broadcasts for Free

I have been through a couple of indoor HDTV antennas. None came close to the performance of this one. I am in a notoriously 'bad reception' area just outside of Chicago. The best antenna I had before this one was an RCA omni-directional; but I still could not get CBS 2 with it nor could I get all the channels it could receive at once. I constantly had to get up and move the antenna while simultaneously checking signal strength on my T.V.(thank God for that feature on my T.V.-Samsung ROCKS!) But it was truly a pain in the butt constantly moving it around and holding it in the air! When I got this one(in less than five days with standard free shipping I might add-thank you Amazon), I had it out of the box and attached to my T.V. within five minutes. Definitely get the 'amplified' version of this antenna, there is a difference. This is the Terk HDTVa, not 'i' - it is worth it, trust this! Go to [...] to compare. This was the third highest rated Terk antenna on their site, the other two were outdoor antennas! That and the fact that it is one of the highest rated indoor antennas on Amazon and TERK's quality were the only factors that influenced my purchase. Because it is one ugly antenna! But if you like modern art, you'll love the look too. Point is that it works well. It took me a weekend of playing around with it to find the "sweet-spot". This is when I was blown away! Not only do I get all of the UHF/VHF signals, but I have not touched the antenna in weeks. Once in awhile I get a little scramble on CBS, or some of the less powerful signals, but it is not often and it goes away. I also pick up 47 channels now! Half of them are in Spanish, but that's' O.K.; it still impressed me. Before with the RCA the best I could get was 31 - That's a big difference. Auto-scan your t.v. before you hook up the TERK! I don't know why this works, but it does; I've done it several times before and always got better results. Make sure you auto-scan your t.v. several times with the antenna attached with the antenna in different locations until you get the 'Optimal' locale in your room. The first scan I did allocated 34 channels, second scan I got 38, the third time was the 'sweet-spot' that netted me 47! Note:that I did this over a course of maybe 2 days of occasional 'fidgeting'. This just comes with the territory if you want free HDTV. The picture quality is superior to all of my friends with cable and dish(they told me this, not my words) But I agree and it is worth it. Also the rabbit ears are a lot longer than they look so extend them all the way to get the best reception on that hard to get signal - that's how I 'found' CBS. I knew this was worth it when my wife saw a food show on WTTW in 1080i and said, "My God that food looks so real I could touch it and I think I can smell it too." - Enough said.

After having a disappointing result with the Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna, I started looking around for a better antenna that was amplified and had better VHF reception. This antenna seemed to be the best bet based on all the reviews for it, and other ones that pointed to it, but that wasn't the case. I'll give it credit for being a simple design - only three big parts to assemble without tools: the base, the antenna, and the amplifier.Now onto the actual performance of the antenna. On the box, Terk boasts, "Perfect antenna for local HDTV reception (channels 2-69) up to 45 miles from broadcast tower", which was ideal for me, as all of the local antennas are within a 15-mile radius from my place. When I hooked it up, it worked a whole lot better than the Leaf Antenna did, but it still failed to pick up some of the VHF stations.Because of the lack of VHF reception, this meant I had to mess with the dipoles, which brings me to the "Poor Design and Exception" part of my title. The amplifier is part of the plug itself and has a short permanent coax cable to hook into the TV, and a permanently affixed cable to the antenna itself, which you would then connect into the amp. All of which greatly limited where you could put the antenna. Additionally, as you can see from the pictures, the antenna has an extremely small base which works fine with the antenna when mounted, but the permanent coax cable comes out the bottom of the base with the option of routing it to the front or rear, but the cable protrudes just a little below the base itself, which makes it a little wobbly. Now going back to the dipoles - they not only look silly when fully extended and trying to get the best reception, they don't seem to work, and they also help to destabilize the base as well.It would help if they made the base a little bit wider, and gave the option of using your own longer coax cable, than to be chained to the permanently affixed ones. I gave it 3 stars because it ended up doing well, better than the leaf antenna, but docked a star for not pulling the VHF stations (despite all the different angles I put the dipoles at and rooms I put the antenna in), and docked another one for the poor design. The one antenna that I did end up going with that actually was able to snag the VHF signals was the Winegard SS-3000 Amplified Indoor UHF/VHF Antenna, as it was a simple and straight forward design, and picked up all of the local stations (though it is a little directionally dependent).Oh and before anyone asks, yes, I did rescan each and every time I tried a new location.