Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

READ THIS! I want to save you the time, money, research and effort I wasted figuring out the new "over the air" antennas and digital signals. Once you know how this stuff works you'll find this is a great little antenna for the right situations. So here's how this works. Just like in the days of old there are UHF and VHF TV signals and just like in the days of old you need different antenna shapes to receive the different signals. This antenna has two circles which are the UHF antenna and the long sticks are the VHF antenna. IMPORTANT: There's no such thing as a range for an antenna. There is only reception capability. The range of the signal that's being received is entirely dependent on the transmission power at the station. Go to antennaweb.org and enter your address to see what towers are transmitting signals that may be in range of your location. This antenna will get you stations in yellow, green and red from antennaweb.org. If you're in the other colors you need an antenna that is powered to pick up weaker signals. Now, let's talk about those round omnidirectional antennas. It's marketing hype. Think of an antenna like your ear. If you're laying on your side on your bed, you hear sounds in all directions. That's an omnidirectional antenna. When you sit up your ear is pointing in a direction and can hear sounds best from that direction but it still hears sounds from all around. That's a directional antenna. In my case I'm picking up a station 57 miles away at about a 90 degree angle from where I've got this antenna pointed. It's not even listed on Antennaweb.org. (To get a complete list of stations go to tvfool.com) So your "directional" antenna is really omnidirectional AND that optimized direction is not a line, it's a triangle that expands as it gets farther away from the antenna. In general, unless you live right in a city with broadcast towers reasonably close, avoid omnidirectional antennas and get a directional antenna like this one. Originally I bought the 1byOne Omnidirectional antennal. It didn't pick up the VHF stations 33 miles in a direct line of sight with no obstructions. Why? It has no long pointy sticks. VHF is received with straight antenna sticks, not circles. It did pick up four stations from one tower 46 miles away transmitting on UHF (because it's a circular antenna). I replaced it with that antenna with this one and I went from 4 channels to 36 channels from five different towers. IMPORTANT: This is because the antenna is "right sized" for the signal strength I'm receiving, not due to any magic in the antenna itself. On Antennaweb.org my signals are all yellow, green and red so the antenna is behaving like it should. In addition to the antenna, it's important to understand what degrades the signal. Trees and other obstructions between the antenna and the tower are obvious. However, once the signal hits the antenna and goes into the coax cable in your house it instantly degrades and that's not so obvious. The more cable and splitters you have, the more the signal degrades. If you have this antenna on your roof you've got a long cable coming from the cable to your TV or "device." You can get a signal booster which will help PRESERVE the signal that was received at the antenna and clean it up a bit. The signal booster doesn't change what your antenna can receive, it just optimizes it. Now, a lot of people are streaming content over some device like a Roku AND getting local TV by an antenna. If that's you and you've got multiple TV's, do NOT run multiple cables with splitters from your antenna. Instead get something like an HD Homerun box and connect that to your home network. Then you will be able to receive your TV signal over the Roku (or whatever) and if you have multiple TV's, you don't need to run extra cable or split the signal. You optimize the signal coming into the HD Homerun box and just use a Roku on each TV with the HD Homerun app to receive local stations on all of your TV's, tablets, laptops, whatever. FINAL THING. There are some directional antennas with rotors that all look alike. Avoid those. They're all cheap made in China antennas and they all have powered components that fail in a few years.