Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna for Off-Air HDTV Reception
by Terk
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Terk HDTVa Indoor Amplified High-Definition Antenna for Off-Air HDTV Reception
Customer Review: Great HD reception
Summary: 5 Stars
I have two of these antennas and use them on my pc's to watch High Definition TV. Both look great and bring in terrestrial signals better than any other indoor antenna I've tried It even works better than an attic antenna I have in my house. Of course, it will take a little tweaking to get the best reception out of it. The elements may be placed horizontally as pictured or vertically. After testing different placements and angles, I found out that placing them vertically works much better for me. Also, the instructions say that you should point it directly toward the tower to get the best signal. My towers are about 45-50 degrees from me. But, I found that pointing the antenna about 60 degrees works a bit better. It may have to do with the vertical placement of the elements. At any rate, a little adjustment with it makes a big difference in whether you can get a good signal or not. If you find that the reception isn't great, adjust it 10 degrees at a time until it works. The higher you place it, the better. If you can put it near a window, that's best. One other factor to mention is the device you're using. My Samsung TV picks up signals a lot better than my computer card, and my computer card (Kworld) picks it up better than an older Samsung HD receiver I have. Again, while any indoor antenna will have it's limitatations, this is by far the best I've tried (out of about 5 different antennas). I can pick up all major broadcasted stations in my area. I definitely recommend it.Customer Review: Success
Summary: 5 Stars
No indoor antenna is going to be perfect. We understand that, so we've tried a few with our new small (19-inch) HDTV that is not hooked up to either cable or satellite. It's in our kitchen. We tried our old amplified and non-amplified antennas that we used with our older analog TV's. They worked but not good enough for non-problematic viewing on all the stations we receive, particularly the network stations. We then tried the Terk TV-5 that was highly recommended by a Best Buy sales rep. It was better than the analog antennas but still not quite up to par, and my wife did not like the fact that the antenna took up a lot of horizontal space even though it has a very low profile. Finally, after reading about the Terk HDTVa amplified antenna and comparing online prices, I decided it was worth a try. So far it's been the best, and it has met our standards. The picture quality on many of the stations have been as good as or better than what we receive on the same stations of our HDTV's that are hooked up to cable. Amazon's price is right (even less than the open box Terk TV-5 we got from Best Buy that I ended up taking back). One nice advantage is that the antenna wire fits in a slot under the body of the antenna and can be placed facing forward or backward. Terk also makes a non-amplified HDTV model that looks identical to this one and is a bit cheaper. I would suggest not buying that one. It's worth spending a few more dollars for this amplified model. We'll likely purchase another one.Customer Review: Lives up to it's reputation
Summary: 5 Stars
Living less then 20 miles from the Broadcast towers in Chicago, I figured maybe I could get away with the cheap HD Antenna from Radio Shack. Well, that worked okay, but certain channels, like CBS were so fuzzy and pixelated, it wasn't even worth it. According to our TiVo, we were getting 50% signal strength on channels like WGN and NBC, and less then 20% on CBS and ABC. Once I put the Terk HDTVa in play, we were amazed at the picture we received. We're getting 90% signal strength on many channels now, and we couldn't be happier. I will say that the chord is fairly short, so I used a coaxial extension chord. At first, that degraded the signal, until I realized that I needed to connect the Terk to it's signal booster, and then the signal booster to the extension chord. Once I did that, we were back to getting amazing images. Easily a better picture then Comcast was giving us.
Like other reviewers here, I went to the website and entered our address to find the best positioning of the Terk to pick up the strongest signal. I even used my compass app on my iPhone to point it in the exact direction the website listed. Well, as soon as I did that, the picture started to degrade. Pointing it in the opposite direction that the website suggested gave us a crystal clear picture, so go with what works, not what the website says. Obviously, where you live is going to factor into your success with this product, but my experience just outside of Chicago couldn't be better.
Customer Review: Good indoor antenna for St. Louis Stations
Summary: 5 Stars
I live in illinois, about 30 miles from the broadcast towers in St. Louis which are about 232 degrees southwest of my position. This antenna is able to pick up all local HD channels really well. I have tried other types of antenna, but at the given range in this area this is the only indoor antenna that will work. I was on the fringe between buying this, the amplified model or the HDTVi, the un-amplified model. I'm glad I got this one, however, because the little bit of signal boost provided by the amp makes all the difference in receiving channels 2-1 and 30-1 without drops.
The log periodic design of this antenna is very sensitive to direction. You must point it directly to the area where your signals are broadcast from for it to pull them in. If your city has towers spread all over that are more than 18 degrees or so apart then this is not the antenna for you. The advertised range is 45 miles, but I'm sure that's really pushing it and is most likely based on a direct line of sight transmission. I would guess that the 30 miles I am getting is basically the upper limit in range for an indoor antenna like this one.
Plus, it looks really cool.
Update:
After using this antenna for a week or so, I have been able to tune a broadcast that is 61.2 miles away (according to antennaweb) with about 60% signal strength. This is really amazing for an indoor antenna, and it definitely reaffirms my recommendation.
Customer Review: Excellent performance!
Summary: 5 Stars
I lived about 15 miles from most of the TV stations in Houston. I had an older Terk antenna that was working quite well with my HDTV. About a year ago, a new highway bridge and some water tanks were built in my area, and this apparently prevented the signal from several stations, including the Houston PBS station, from reaching my house. I lived with this situation for several months, then decided to try a different antenna to see if I could receive the missing channels. I was determined to not spend more than $50. I did my research and found that the Terk HDTVa was the only antenna in that price range that came highly recommended. I was a bit skeptical at first, but bought one from Amazon (good price, reliable vendor) just to give it a shot. As soon as I assembled the antenna and connected it to my TV, the results were immediate and startling. All the missing channels came back, along with a few more! I was able to receive signals from stations as far away as 50 miles! In my case, all the stations are located within a 100-degree arc, so I did not have to test the directional character of this antenna as reported by several other users. Note also that Houston is relatively flat country. Under these conditions, this antenna is superlative. As for the looks of the antenna, that is subjective. Personally, I thought that it looks cool. I didn't bother extending the dipole antennas. In short, I love this antenna. Money well spent!