Perfect Situation Only
Written: Feb 15 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to set up and looks nice.
Cons: Must have very short cable run to avoid loss of signal
The Bottom Line: Unless you are extremely close to the broadcast source or have a very short cable run then this antenna will not meet your needs.
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| bigpebble's Full Review: TERK TV-55 TERK Indoor/Outdoor Amplified TV Antenn... |
I purchased a 36" Sony WEGA HDTV ready TV and DirecTV Hughes Platinum HDTV satellite receiver about eight months ago. When DirecTV finally came out with their HDTV line up a couple of months later it was $11 a month to get just four channels, so I bought a TERK TV-55 antenna to get the local HDTV channels instead (Phoenix has 11 DTV stations).
My house is new and I pulled cable for everything I could think of when it was built, but since I had planned on using DirecTV for HDTV I didn’t plan on an antenna run so I had to settle for placing the antenna on the living room floor next to the patio door. My house is about 12 miles from the TV broadcast towers and has am unobstructed view, so I was able to get, most of the channels at various times of the day, but only four on a regular basis. By manually adjusting it I was able to get several channels when they wouldn’t come in clearly, but of course that usually ruined other channels.
I figured that if I was able to get this decent of a reception from the floor that putting it outside and 11 feet in the air (on top of the patio) was going to solve all my problems., so I had cable pulled to the outside patio cover. This increased the cable run from 15 feet to 25 feet and apparently that is a problem. When I hooked it back up I only got one channel. I moved the in-line amplifier from inside to outside next to the antenna (even though it’s not designed for this) and was able to get two channels.
Twenty-five feet is not a long cable run for an outdoor antenna in my book. Most runs to the outside are two or three times that long. So my recommendation on this antenna is that unless you are extremely close to the broadcast source or have a very short cable run then this antenna will not meet your needs.
I’ve ordered a $25 Gemini ZHDTV1 HDTV-UHF indoor antenna after reading multiple favorable reviews on Amazon. At one quarter of the price it’s worth a shot.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
bigpebble
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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