Cutting the cable is not always easy. It does however, tend to save you a great deal of money. Where I live, there are very few options - only one cable company, and just the basic package was running me over one hundred dollars a month. I started to do some research on my options and one of the ones I was most curious about was an HD antenna. That search led me to the 1byone Amplified HDTV Antenna with a fifty mile range, and the overall results have been excellent.
There are multiple things to consider here. I have a house, so a mounted roof antenna is probably the best option, but I frankly lack the inclination to clamber up onto my roof in the middle of winter (it gets cold and slippery up here in Michigan) and try to install something like that (especially since it is a tall house with a rather steep roof).
This led me down a path towards internal options. There are a lot of factors that go into how well this kind of antenna will work for you. How close are the towers? How close to a tower-facing window/wall can you install this? What kind of landscape do you have - is your antenna going to be facing an open field, or houses and tall, thick trees? There were a lot of questions I had to ponder here, and the more I looked at them, the more I realized that at some point for the best results, I will likely have to invest in a roof/exterior mounted antenna because I do live in an area that is not terribly close to towers, is surrounded by trees and my living room is in the middle of a house made of thick walls. Not an ideal environment.
That being said, I was very surprised at how well this antenna still picked up over a dozen different channels for me, all except the furthest of which came through in outstanding high definition quality. First - my setup. This is a boosted that uses a detachable amplifier. According to the documentation, you will want to test this both boosted and not, as it can impact your results quite a bit. There are times when a house or apartment close to towers might actually lose channels due to boosting. For me? Boosting was key. It jumped my channel count from five to sixteen. The booster does come with an AC adapter, so keep your outlet count in mind when setting this up.Additionally, it comes with a nice long twenty foot coaxial cable, though I only needed about half of that to get this attached to the window closest to the television.
You do not have to affix to the window (though it does come with a couple of sticky pads you can use to help facilitate this part of the installation), but I got far better results when I did so. I tried a few different walls and finally settled on the window, which gave me the highest number of channels. As an extended test, I took this antenna over to a buddy's house who lives in town. This is perfect for apartment life, since there is no need to really install anything physically to the building. Man we got dozens of channels there, so the product certainly delivers as promised, but as you can see - the earlier factors I brought up will still be important to consider given your situation.
As for the product design itself, this antenna is incredibly thin (as in a few sheets of paper in thickness), but the material is a sturdy, flexible material that is durable and easy to hide away if you want it out of sight. I could see tucking this behind a mounted picture if you have a wall you want to put it on. I just used the upper left corner of the window. My particular one was white, which accounts not only for the flat antenna but the cables and adapter as well.
Installation is quite easy. If you have an HD ready television, simply hook this up to the coaxial jack on the back of your television. You can see where to attach the amplifier along that same line if you decide that you need it. Then have your television scan for channels. If it can find them, it will automatically store them. That was for the installation process.
The one hiccup I encountered that was worth noting is that Bluetooth use can impact the signal if it is too close by. It does not happen with all devices, but we have a couple if iHome Bluetooth speakers, and I noticed that if my kids were using those in the same or adjacent room as my television in conjunction with their iPads (to stream music while doing chores for example), my signal quality did degrade. Considering the numerous Wi-fi and Bluetooth devices we have in our household, the antenna actually performs quite admirably, but it was worth mentioning this one exception to the rule.
If you are looking to cut the cord on cable, this antenna is a really solid solution for doing so. At roughly a third of the cost of what an average month of basic cable costs me, this antenna pays for itself in about two weeks. Certainly the number of channels are lower overall, and your individual circumstances can impact just how effective it is for you, but the overall hardware works just about flawless for me in my testing.
Hardware Information
Audio/Video
Publisher(s):
1byone
Type:
HD Antenna
Article by Nick
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