I am about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh. Not in a valley, but not on a hill either, and surrounded by tall pine trees. I was ready to ditch Direct TV because we never watched it and was tired of paying for it. I was going to miss my local news though, so I did lots of research on antennas. At first I thought it was hopeless for us due to living so far from the city. I talked to several people in my area who tried to use an antenna with no luck. I returned several before I tried this ClearStream 4V. This time, however, I did pair my antenna with an amplifier. Now I'm not sure if that actually made a difference, but I was finally picking up some channels so I didn't want to mess with it anymore! I am getting 16 digital channels, which I know isn't much compared to what most people are able to pick up, but given the fact that I live in the middle of no where (we don't even have cell phone service at home), I am happy. I picked up CBS and PBS no problem, but had to do some adjusting to finally get FOX and NBC. I had given up hope on getting FOX and NBC at first, but then my husband got a longer pole and mounted the antenna on that. He also took some pieces off our Direct TV satellite, that was now junk, to be able to tilt and turn this antenna a little easier. Once he raised it another couple feet and tilted it back some, FOX came in great! This is mounted on our ranch home roof, and the additional pole is probably about 4ft high. If at first you don't get much - keep adjusting! Like I said - I had given up hope on FOX and NBC, but an afternoon of modifications and lots of turning and scanning for channels and we are picking them up clearly now! I am using an amplifier and am not splitting the cable at all. I tried to use Direct TVs previously run cables, but they were split in the basement where they then went to 3 different TVs. So instead I did run my own wiring, but it wasn't difficult since Direct TV already had the proper holes in all the right places. We also used the Antenna direct app to help us know where to point the antenna, but honestly I don't think it helped much. For our final adjustment we ditched it and pointed towards the direction we knew the city was, and picked up all the networks we wanted.

I purchased the 2V 60-mile range to be on the safe side and couldn't be more satisfied. The 35-mile range may have worked fine, but now see no further need for an amplifier. Assembly was easy with good instructions and pictures. For initial tryout I clamped the mounting bracket to the top of a A-frame 5ft ladder (on my second floor) and pointed it straight east with Chicago E-NE and Merrillville, IN E-SE of me about 25-miles away. After going through TV's automatic channel setup, I found I was getting fantastic reception on about 60 channels. My TV is an early generation HD ready version, and I was receiving HD signals on both the major CBS, NBC, ABC, etc stations, along with their affiliates, and also the Me-Too, U-Too, etc stations and PBS stations. I couldn't tell the difference between this antenna reception versus the Comcast Xfinity cable. The 60 channels is misleading as they include the many channels I am not interested in, such as the home shopping networks, religious stations, Spanish stations (I am not bilingual). But I do receive the ones I most watch. Now I need to get an affordable Internet provider that has adequate speed for occasional streaming. Comcast Xfinity may have a lot of features that appeal to some customers, such as the increasing TV packages, but are now pushing their mobile packages for smartphones and expanded WIFI, home security, home automation, etc. And when you go to their website, they only show you upgrading from your existing account. So at least this 2V antenna solves the first hurdle. I'll next relocate it to the attic to get it higher up and not to be seen. Mounting and coaxial tye-in to existing whole house wiring would then be beneficial. After notified that my review was posted I decided to read a lot of the 1-star ratings, and thus would like to add the following comments:. First and foremost is I would not recommend installing this unit outdoors no matter what climate you live in. And I noticed some customers had pictures showing mounted in front of their dish antenna... (whether dish is operational or not) I consider this to be ill advised. As for booster/amplifier, it is more components that could go bad, which is why I avoided getting one. Being in city really close to transmission towers may sound great but you may be getting blocked by buildings in front of you. Lastly, buy quality coaxial cable, keep short as only needed, and make sure connector to cable is installed properly and connector to antenna and TV is a solid connection. I'll update my review once I relocate to attic, maybe even a photo or two. Will also let you know how hooking up my DVR goes. My only regret that I forgot to mention is that I'll miss having Xfinity's up/down station scrolling with across hourly programs that give short description of that episode along with showing future re-airing dates and search function. But I can live with that if it means cutting out my current TV bill.

Installed outdoors on roof edge peak due to location of the house in a remote rural area in Yancey County surrounded my mountains in western NC.Could only get public TV channels and 1 commercial channel (sometimes) with an indoor "rabbit ear/loop" amplified antenna. Now get same public TV channels plus 4 clear commercial channels. Still tweaking the aim to see if I can pull in an additional station from Asheville NC, but there's a mountain in the way. UPDATE : After less than a month, it seems the antenna has stopped working. All the extra channels that initially showed up are now low signal strength and not viewable. The antenna is still locked in position. all the connections are tight, but no signal boost over what I used to get from a desk top indoor antenna. After contacting Antennas Direct customer service, I discovered the reason for the signal loss was a failure of the broadcast tower, and not my antenna. Turns out a few days after I installed the antenna, an ice storm caused the collapse of the transmission tower for 4 of the stations. They are still offline and won't have service restored until after Easter. Great support from Antennas Direct and very responsive, courteous service.

I bought this to replace a Channelmaster Flatenna, which cost $10 shipped from Channelmaster (now $19) and $10 + shipping ordered here. The Flatenna does as good of a job as the more expensive flat rectangular antennas that I tried, but it isn't very good on low VHF (channels 2 through 6), which a few stations still use. When a station in my area that dual-broadcasts on UHF 47 and VHF 4 began having issues with its UHF band, I bought this antenna. It picks up the VHF band of that station, and it also picks up every other station in my area that other indoor antennas get. It should be noted that the transmitter of the low-VHF station is only a few miles away; other transmitters vary between 15 and 35 miles away. This does not pick up stations that are 60 miles away (nor is it advertised to), even with the amplifier.

The one downside is the amplifier. It did not improve reception on any stations, and it distorted a few due to over-amplification. The problem with the amplifier is that the antenna is useless if the amplifier is connected but not plugged into a power source (USB, outlet, etc.). Because of this, if you need to switch from a station that needs the amplifier to one that is distorted when it's plugged in, you have to swap the entire amplifier out, meaning unscrewing and screwing in cables. I therefore recommend that you buy just the antenna itself, and if you need an amplifier for harder-to-reach stations, buy one with a toggle switch that turns it on and off but still allows the antenna to work if the amplifier is toggled off.

Overall, this is an excellent antenna that does work for me on a low VHF station with a nearby transmitter, and it works on stations on the UHF band with transmitters up to 35 miles away. I don't recommend the amplifier at this time.

I had a 30 year old RCA mast in my attic that I really only relied on for really bad weather when the satellite was out (very rare, but when you're in a storm, you want to be able to get news). When CBS got into a pissing match with DISH, I decided that it was time to actually look at an upgrade and see what a "digital ready" antenna could bring to the table.

I started with an indoor amplified HDTV antenna. One of the rectangular sheets that's supposed to be so effective/ Garbage. I literally connected a metal coathanger to a piece of coax and it performed better.

So, I checked elevations, ran the maps on Antennaweb, did my research on products, etc. and finally settled on this antenna.

When I first connected it up and aimed it based on my signal maps, I was really disappointed. It was significantly better than the indoor antenna or coat hanger, but my old mast in the attic kicked it's ass. I received ~27 stations on the mast and I could only pull in about 13 with the ClearStream. Top reception on the mast was an 82% signal and the best on the clearstream was 68%

I loosened everything up and just focused on the one station that I had a perfect unobstructed LOS to. It's 38 miles away, but it's a strong transmitter and nothing between me and the tower top (it's about 1250 higher than my antenna, curvature blocks the bottom ~650ft giving me under a degree of elevation over that distance). Admittedly, I've never dealt with an antenna designed like this before, so I was defaulting to keeping everything straight on the horizontal plane, keeping it perpendicular to the target tower, etc. Nope...this guy did not like that. Turns out that the best signal was at about a 35?!? degree inclination. Ironically, this also improved reception from the stations coming from behind.

The antenna also didn't like being aimed directly at the tower. It liked being just either side of straight-on.

Now that I've got it aimed, I'm pulling in 37 stations (about a dozen actual towers) and the ones directly behind and in front of the antenna are rock solid (80%+ vs mid 60% signals). The stations from the side have suffered, but I'm almost in a straight line between two major markets and I have increased my overall channel count while losing those outliers. I don't get the physics behind this thing, but I can't argue with the results.