EV's Recommended & Top Rated DTV Indoor UHF/VHF Set Top Antenna Review Round-Up Guide - Page 4

The Philips SDV 2210/17 is one inexpensive antenna I've been testing out. Retailers sell it for under $15 ($10 at Wal*Mart). In my suburban location, performance was pretty decent but not quite enough to be my "antenna of choice". This non-amplified aerial features a "UHF flat panel" and a multi-position fine tuning device. The attached cable is pretty thin, but the overall assembly quality is pretty good. Appearance is quite elegant. Not quite as sensitive on UHF as the RCA ANT-110, and not as stable as the amplified Philips MANT510, but possibly a good choice for your location.

One other great feature: this antenna has a fairly wide base, making it less prone to tipping when you put it up on top of a 7-foot-high Ikea bookshelf The 5-foot connecting cable is similar to that used for a wired mouse, it is competent but not as thick or extremely insulated as the quad RG-6 cable I use with my MANT510.

Yes. I recently tried the Silver Sensor PHDTV1 again, and took it back to the store. It did a couple of channels really well...but where I live, local TV stations are situated 12 to 23 miles away in five different directions. I really wanted to have the Silver Sensor be the solution - it's an incredibly logical design, but for my residence, it isn't. The risk of tipping over was a real concern, particularly since my two CECBs are propped on top of loudspeakers and could be yanked down to the floor when the Silver Sensor fell.

I will say my second attempt using the Silver Sensor, the fit and finish were somewhat better than the first sample.

P.S. When I first picked up a $9.99 TriQuest Model 8040 Amplified Indoor Antenna at Big Lots, it seemed promising, but the unit really isn't competitive in terms of resistance to interference, signal fade, and multipath. I might send a picture for anyone who's really interested - again, it MIGHT work at your location, but once the novelty wore off of getting a new amplified antenna for $10, it was a disappointment.

What does the "multi-position fine tuning device" actually DO? I see some other antennae which have this feature but none of the web sites really describe what they do.

Yeah, I tried that one too. Actually, it worked pretty well for me. It didn't get all of the stations in my area, but it did much better than I expected for a $10 antenna. It wouldn't be my antenna of choice, but for someone on a tight budget, it might be perfect.

RCA's ANT110 is one of the nicer surprises I've bought. This could be one of the better indoor antennas, though it is deceptively simple looking. Fry's sells it for $6.99. Note that the ANT110 sold at Fry's includes an integrated 5 foot (1.5 metre) coax connecting cable and 75-ohm connector.

VHF dipoles stretch out to 39", the integrated UHF loop is about 5" in diameter. The antenna stand is properly weighted and stable. This antenna brought in good signal strength levels - in some cases VERY healthy strength.

Over time, I did find one of my favorite channels (UHF 39 which is remapped to 7.1 and 7.2) that the large silver UHF loop was somewhat more prone to interference from nearby aircraft or even from nearby pedestrians than I'd have preferred. Interestingly, for fun I plugged it in to my TV's analog inputs and the analog OTA reception (which is truly miserable at my home) was significantly better than with other aerials.

RCA makes a similar unit, the ANT111, which sells for about three dollars more than the ANT110 and is sold at a greater variety of retailers (Wal*Mart, Best Buy come to mind). I also bought one of these, my Dad is still enjoying it. The UHF aerial is a smaller rectangle, it felt a bit lighter weight but was a decent performer.

I'd like to know if others have had experience with the GE Optima. I no longer am using mine; I think at its price point, it really would have been much better with detachable cables. The permanently-attached cables on the $30 GE Optima were not any better quality than on the Philips $10 SDV2210/17.

I've been really curious about the GE 24775 Quantum Indoor HDTV Antenna. It has one glowing review on Amazon, but that's not much to go on. It looks like an interesting design. I've never seen an antenna with only one dipole before, so I would be a little apprehensive about trying it. Anyone have any experience with this one?

Yeah, I finally just got rid of the link. The editor kept replacing part of the URL with asterisks, so I'm not sure what that's about. Anyway, you can find it on Amazon. There hasn't been any buzz about it, so I'm guessing it's an expensive paper weight like a lot of the new fangled ones. It often seems like the more high-tech and expensive things get, the less useful they are.

I have one set of 30+ year old rabbit ears still in service. I can get S.F. and San Jose analogs with them. The UHF loop (bowtie) is currently MIA, but I remember it as being larger than the ones Radio Shack sells today.

I guess they don't make many of their own anymore, and just sell more of the other brands now.

Ones with thicker rabbit ears seemed to work better for me, although I'm not enough of an engineer to know why.

Not sure about the bigger vs smaller traditional UHF loop, but I would think if it's too small, it probably wouldn't work as good.

The ones I could never figure out, and they get pretty good reviews, are those little solidly-encased, rectangular, powered UHF models. I know that at least Radio Shack and Philips makes them.

(edit: the Radio Shack is the DA-5200.)

All the reviews about both that I've ever read are mostly positive, and I know there have been a few people here that have had some satisfactory results with them.

Never tried one personally, though.

Don't really know anything about any of the others one way or the other. But if I've never heard anything about them from anyone here in the past I just figure they're not anything much worth mentioning.

I usually won't just go by the store reviews, because we all know how they tend to "pick and choose" those.

The Silver Sensor has a metal plate at the base that gives it some weight at the bottom, but it is hallow so you could insert an added weight item for more stability. I've used one for 2 years here in Honolulu and it works well, it helps that only the FOX station here is on VHF( Ch. 8), but can't lock on to the NBC station that transmits 17mi. west of my locale. But I'm not the only one with that problem, even Dish and Directv can't maintain the signal at it's Honolulu POP.

I've never tried Channel Master but have certainly heard of them by reputation. They have been known for building quality antennas for decades. I would be curious to know how this one compares to the venerable Silver Sensor.

It was kind of odd though. The page where the antennas were listed showed six antennas, but if you go to their online store, only three of them are actually available for purchase.

On behalf of AVS, and our readers, thank you very much for this excellent topic.