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Terk TV-55 Indoor/Outdoor Amplified Antenna

Terk TV-55 Indoor/Outdoor Amplified Antenna

List Price: $99.99
Your Price: $67.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Makes no Difference
Review: I connected the antenna to my Mitsubishi with an integrated HD tuner and could not receive stations with any consistency. I mounted the antenna in several locations, indoor and out, including on a mast on my roof and reception never improved. I purchased a cheaper conventional outdoor antenna and reception is perfect. Very disappointing for the price.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Antenna for Outdoor Reception
Review: I have read about the inconsistent reception if you install the antenna inside. But since it is trying to pick up a digital signal and should be line-of-sight with the broadcast signal, it should be installed outdoors. With that said, install the antenna outside (with an Antenna Rotator) and you should see surprising results. I am approx. 30 miles from the broadcast source, and the signal is very strong and the picture is very clear. The amplifier that is included is important if you have to install a lengthy cable from antenna to your TV. Must use a RG6 cable.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lamer than lame, I'd give it a zero if I could
Review: I have the TV-55 (purchased based on the completely misleading recommendation charts from Terk) and mounted it on a second floor eve facing known television transmitters...reception is horrible. I purchased this antenna for use with HDTV and run it with the included amplifier and according to signal strength indicators in my various HD devices this antenna is only a modest improvement over indoor antennas. I later bought the Gemini ZHDTV1 from Amazon, 1/3 the price and it works much better at grabbing HD OTA signals than the junk TV-55.

I highly recommend buyers who are looking to pick up distant OTA signals skip this antenna.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Lamer than lame
Review: I have the TV-55 and mounted it on a second floor eve facing known television transmitters...receiption is horrible. I purchased this antenna for use with HDTV and run it with the included amplifier and according to signal strength indicators in my various HD devices this antenna is only a modest improvement over indoor antennas. I later bought the Gemini ZHDTV1 from Amazon and it works much better at grabbing HD OTA signals.

I would recommend against the the TV-55.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Much better than expected
Review: I hoped for four HDTV stations, when I decided to mount it in the attic. I got eleven.

The installer was amazed too. He had installed another one at a home much nearer the antenna farm than my house. He had assumed that the close proximity produced the excellent results. It was the antenna.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Perfect Situation Only
Review: I purchased a 36" Sony WEGA HDTV ready TV and DirecTV Hughes Platinum HDTV satellite receiver about a year ago. When DirecTV finally came out with their HDTV line up a couple of months later it was $11 a month to get just four channels, so instead I bought a TERK TV-55 antenna to get the OTA HDTV channels (Phoenix has 16 DTV stations).

My house is new and I pulled cable for everything I could think of when it was built, but since I had planned on using DirecTV for HDTV I didn't plan on an antenna run so I had to settle for placing the antenna on the living room floor next to the patio door. My house is about 12 miles from the TV broadcast towers and has an unobstructed view, so I was able to get, most of the channels at various times of the day, but only five or six on a regular basis. By manually adjusting it I was able to get several other channels when they wouldn't come in clearly, but of course that usually ruined other channels.

I figured that if I was able to get this decent of a reception from the floor, that putting it outside and 12 feet in the air (on top of the patio) was going to solve all my problems., so I had cable pulled to the outside patio cover. This increased the cable run from 15 feet to 25 feet and apparently that is a problem. When I hooked it back up I only got one channel. I moved the in-line amplifier from inside to outside next to the antenna (even though it's not designed for this) and was able to get two channels.

Twenty-five feet is not a long cable run for an outdoor antenna in my book. Most runs to the outside are usually two or three times that long. So my recommendation on this antenna is that unless you are extremely close to the broadcast source or have a very short cable run then this antenna will not meet your needs.

I've ordered a $25 Gemini ZHDTV1 HDTV-UHF indoor antenna after reading multiple favorable reviews. At one quarter of the price it's worth a shot.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not as good as the charts suggest
Review: I purchased a Terk TV-55 antenna to pick up HDTV/DTV broadcasts from stations that were approximately 15 miles away from my home, all in the UHF spectrum. I have not been able to pick up any of them with the TERK 55.

Using the antenna locator (www.antennaweb.org)all indications were the TERK-55 should have been good for my purpose, even from inside the home. It was not.

From within my two-story home, I could find no location where I got acceptable reception on any channel. I then bought a 10' antenna mast and mounted the TERK-55 on my roof (chimney mount), at approximately the same elevation as my neighbors who have the "old fashioned" style antennas. While they receive local channels perfectly, I was only able to receive decent (but not great) analog VHF signals, very weak UHF analog signals, and no UHF digital signals.

Terk customer support tried very hard to work with me to solve the problem. The were willing to send additional parts, etc. to try to make it work, but ultimately we could never isolate the problem to a specific issue.

I bought extra in-line amplifiers (TERK BIA-20) to try to accomodate for my relatively long cable run (about 150 feet), but the amplifiers actually made the problem worse (guessing it conflicted with the internal amplifier on the antenna, but that's only a guess).

Bottomline ... I'm not an expert antenna installer, but I'm going back to an "old fashioned" style antenna.

From my perspective, the TERK 55 was a failure ...

...but if you are going to try it, I'll give you one piece of technical advice. While you point most "yagi" style antennas at the station for best reception, you do not point the TERK-55 at the station. Especially for UHF channels, best reception actually comes when the TERK 55 is perpendicular to the station (i.e. if the station is north of you, align the antenna east/west, with the printing on the antenna case facing the station).

Hope this helps.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Failed after 6 months
Review: I purchased the antenna 6 months ago and had great difficulty positioning it for the best reception. I finally settled on a outdoor site under the eave, however, reception was only fair.
After six months the antenna stopped receiving HD signals.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: not worth the money
Review: I thought by spending extra money I would get good reception indoors, but I was very disappointed. This antenna performed the same as my $10 indoor antenna. What a waste of money. I returned it where I had bought it. I didn't try it outdoor. If you're looking for an indoor antenna, don't buy this product. I'm still searching for a good indoor antenna.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: My [cheap] rabbit ears gave me better reception!
Review: I thought that if I was going to pay [alot more money] for an antenna, I was going to get perfect reception, I was wrong. I can get a great picture on only one side of my house, the trouble is my bedroom TV is on the other side. I hoped that if I mounted this antenna on the outside of the house on the "good" side, I would get a clear picture. However, before I did this I decided to test the antenna. I connected a 75ft cable to my bedroom tv and dragged to the other side of the house to a tv that gets great reception. I hooked up the antenna and ran back to the bedroom to look at the great reception I was going to get. To my surprise it was worse than what I had prior. I then removed the Terk antenna and attached my $2 rabbit ears to the 75ft cable (still on the good side of the house) and got perfect reception. Just to be sure, I went ahead and crawled on my roof and tested the Terk. Awful reception! Again, I tried my rabbit ears on the roof and had great reception. The Terk has been returned and I am now going to waterproof my rabbit ears and stick them on the roof. This is my second and last try with a Terk product. I purchased and kept the [price] TerkQ radio antenna and found it to be worse than the antenna that came with the stereo. I will never try Terk again.


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