Hey Woot — how about telling us what the asterisks refer to in the description.
Long Range Reception: Up to 150 Miles*
and
Antenna Can Be Mounted On Roof, Patio Railing Or Inside Attic**
Please and thank you!
I agree, but with the “up to 150 miles” one I think we can safely assume it means “you may have different results depending upon where you are geographically due to things like hills and mountains”. As for the other one, I’m stumped.
From the box…
- Channel reception varies depending on signal strength in your area, distance to broadcast towers and surrounding area(i.e. buildings, terrain, weather, etc.)
** Mast not included.
It gives no indication of direction. Once it reaches the limit in one direction, it automatically reverses direction, so there is no chance of the cable getting wound around the mast.
150 mile range claim seems to be a stretch. Cannot get even a weak signal from towers approx. 50-60 miles away.
This tool will give you a better idea of what is available over the air from your location: AntennaWeb - Antenna Signal Prediction
Judging from appearance alone, the Polaroid model Woot is selling is a medium directional antenna. (Yellow color on the charts).
I just put one in. 150 miles reflects line of sight. Surely everyone has some sort of interference so dont expect that much distance. The key no matter what is set up the right degrees to point the antenna properly bc its NOT omnidirectional. Go to [URLhttp://www.antennaweb.org/Address]. Its a great site that you plug in your address and it will give you the coordinates to point the antenna properly. First of all the mast is cheap. Buy yourself a 3/4" or 1/2" 10 foot electrical conduit pipe for the antenna bout $10 at Home Depot. You’ll also need some sort of mount. I’d Ebay’d it for that. There are two kinds chimney (cheapest) or wall. Runs about $10-20. Don’t forget to ground your antenna so you dont fry your TV in the next electrical storm!
How does this thing supply signal to two tvs without a splitter ??
And where can I find the manual ?
These are junk.
Yes, they initially do work acceptably as an antenna, but they are so poorly made they will NOT work for long.
The antenna part is ok, but the electronics are trash and the wires absurdly thin. I saw this upon installation and thoroughly sealed everything up and didn’t bother to rely on the rotator at all. Nevertheless, it only made it 2 months before total failure.
That link has to be the best estimation of what I will get on my TV that I have seen yet. I get exactly those channels on my Omnidirectional antenna.
FYI I had one of these directional antennas and it was as others have said junk. The biggest issue I had was that I have a TiVo and I needed to be able to have signal from two directions at the same time to record all my shows. I ended up with an antenna that looks like a disc with wings sticking out of it, that thing works way better than these directional things.
This thing is trash. I hooked it up and get only one local station clearly. I am approximately 35-40 miles from the towers in the DC area. A old fashioned 10 foot beam antenna will pull in all of those signals plus half of Baltimore’s.
I want to thank everyone for the info and eperiences. We live about 80 miles from the towers and I guess I am stuck with Direct TV for a while.
So thanks a bunch to all your comments.
Longevity seems to be an issue. Would mounting in an attic (out of the elements) eliminate that negative? Does anyone have any experience with mounting in the attic? Is it less effective than mounting it outside? …TIA
I’ve had this in my attic in place of an omnidirectional antenna and it has worked great for over 6-mo.
I’m too scared to get onto a ladder 40-ft to my roof, so I tried a quality omnidirectional antenna with signal booster in the attic. The attic roof is composite shingles over plywood, so signal not that awesome, even with booster. Only picked up the strongest towers out to maybe 5-mi.
With the directional antenna I’m picking up towers in excess of 40-mi through the roof.
I did support the cable by adding a strain relief (zip tied the cable to the support post). It does seem a bit flimsy for something that must rotate frequently. Beyond that, no problems at all.
The antenna comes with a box that houses the motor control and a built-in splitter.
Polaroid went bankrupt in 2001 and its successor company, also called Polaroid, went bankrupt again in 2008.
Now, the remnants of that company makes money by selling its name to Chinese companies to place on their cheap shoddy p.o.s. products to be sold to gullible Americans who remember the original Polaroid Company.
I know, because I was one of those gullible consumers.
I purchased a Polaroid digital television at Walmart Black Friday Sale that literally melted a year after purchase. Polaroid TV subsequently filed for bankruptcy, leaving over 500,000 consumers in the dust.
This product is of the same lineage and quality.
Shame on Woot for selling this item.
Some observations after installing one of these: First, the higher it is mounted, the better the range and reception. (this is probably rather obvious, but a neighbor installed his about a foot higher than the ridgeline of his roof and barely picks up 6 channels. I have mine mounted about 10-feet above the ridgeline and pick up over 50 stations. Height equals range.) Second, when I first installed this I went through my DISH satellite box (antenna > satellite box > TV). It’s great having all the over-the-air channels show up on the guide, but I wanted to experiment, so I connected it directly to the TV instead (bypassing the Hopper). It now pulls in about 12 additional stations and the signal quality is greatly improved. And finally, this is not the best-constructed antenna, but for 20 bucks you’d be hard-pressed to find a better deal on anything similar. It also does have a 5-year warranty, but the exclusions make it basically worthless (“This warranty … does not cover consumer instruction, delivery, installation, set-up, adjustments, cosmetic damage or damage due to acts of nature, accident, misuse, abuse, negligence, commercial use or
modification of, or to any part of the Product.”)
I have a little Arctec (?) antenna that looks like a fly swatter and gets six if the seven stations in the area…all 40 miles away. I think these are sold “as seen on TV” with other brand names.
You can make a better antenna than this. Google home made HDTV antennas.
Here is an example site: diytvantennas.com
(I am not affiliated with that site)
I live in a 2nd floor apt. and can not receive any ota channels, since they allowed Verizon put up an office tower about 15 years ago. I have tried lots of different types and none worked. Have Comcast ,not happy !!!