ClearStream Eclipse Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna with Sure Grip Technology - 50 Mile Range

This review has two purposes. One is to give you positive feedback on this product. I also want to provide a review and steer you away from the awful placebo antenna that it replaced.I confess that I was a bit skeptical when I decided to buy this product. I had previously purchased a Winegard HDTV antenna with a flat sheet format. The antenna had a number of design flaws that I suspect a good mechanical engineering or materials science undergraduate would have spotted. I wrote to the company to point out the design flaw, and the cracking problems that it caused. Not a peep from them. Channels would fade and disappear even though the transmission tower is less than 10 miles away. You were continually reorienting the antenna to try to improve the picture. One day you would get a channel, the next you wouldn't. My wife had a running joke when the channel disappeared: "Are you breathing again? Stop it. You just made the picture disappear again." The Winegard product was a disaster.The most difficult part of setting up the ClearStream product was getting it out of the packaging. Installation was a snap. I would encourage exploring multiple locations. Moving the antenna less that a foot resulted in a pretty dramatic change in the number of channels. Once a good placement was established, all the channels that I wanted came in and the picture was very clear. This was almost never the case with the Winegard disaster. I waited a few days before submitting this review because I wanted to be sure that it was not just an aberration. It wasn't. The channels have been coming in well and reliably.The only question left is why I waited so long to try it. It is pretty aggravating to watch a playoff game, have it come down to the last minute, Curry has the ball, and suddenly your screen goes blank and you get a "Signal strength is low." message across your screen. If I could make the Winegard excuse for an antenna suffer I would. As for the ClearStream, I am very pleased I bought it.

Using the antenna.com site shows you approximately how many local stations you should be able to receive. I'm showing good results for 8 stations local network, green. Not one gets picked up by the antenna! Support wants me to move the antenna to the front of the house to window? It's supposed to reach 60 miles and you want me to move it 20' to the window to get these stations? Got 5 station, 2 so badly pixalitated can't watch 3 others? all pbs! No network stations. Unless you can see the tv stArion out the window you may have to invest in a roof, powered antenna with 150 mile range.

This review is for the 50 mile indoor version. Let me qualify these comments by stating that I do not live in an urban area and my expectations for this device were probably not realistic going in. According to antennaweb.org my site shoud be able to receive 5 channels (from ground level) including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and PBS. The farthest away of these antennas is 37 miles. So a 50 mile antenna should work, right? Not so much. I can clearly receive 2-3 of the channels which is positional. It does seem to work better on a glass window than on the wall. i guess it works decently well but not really adequate for my needs. Not a 2 network person. The channels that do come in have a beautiful HD picture. I probably need an outdoor antenna on the roof.

My husband and I were sick of paying so much for crappy cable that we decided to cut ties and just use our streaming services plus this antenna. The first thing I have to recommend before buying an antenna is finding out where the closest broadcast tower is to your location, too many times people buy antennas not realizing they are only good for up to 25-30 miles, which if you live in that range is good but most people will need something much stronger in order to pick up a really good signal. Where we live is about 40-43 miles from the nearest tower so to take no chances I bought the more expensive model to cover all bases. It arrived quickly and based on the reviews we were interested to see how it would live up to its rating. The antenna itself is very light and really nothing at all, they are not joking when they say you can hide this thing away. Slap it on the back of your tv with the adhesive backing or hang it on your window. I recommend putting on your window or to the direction of the tower signal you are trying to pick up. We laid it flat by the window and the signal was very scrambled and often knocked out channels, but when we put it on the window facing the signal direction it really performed. Overall we get about 30-35 channels depending on the day and I guess what they are allowing to "old school stream" across the airwaves. And while you have to chuckle at the amount of Christian and international Christian channels we pick up we also get ABC and NBC, PBS, great international news stations and a number of free movie and old re-run stations that are offered in normal cable packages. The hardware included made it quick to install and we always perform a new sweep after storms just because the connection can get scrambled in bad whether and cause channels to drop in and out but we rarely have any issues with connectivity. For this being our first antenna I am really pleased with the purchase and believe the price was justified in it. I would recommend it once you have verified this is best for your area but if you are not that far away from a tower don't feel the need to spend more money than you need to, remember that was the reason you dropped cable in the first place.