Yeah, me too
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That is a ChannelMaster 4228HD. It is a beast.
Decided to take the dive and get a HD Homerun Flex. Wow. Works great, paired with both my antennas, the local stuff should not be an issue anymore.
I had been running OTA channels through Plex and through Hauppage WinTV. It would stutter while channels were playing. The audio would skip a bit when that happened. I just got sick of it tbh. The Flex took care of that. Wow, what a difference.
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Did you locate the mast amplifier outdoors near the antenna, or can it be indoors either where the coax cable from the antenna runs through the exterior wall or near where the cable is connected to the tv?
My antennas are in the attic, so I placed the pre-amp on the mast that I mounted up there. The second part of that amplifier system is a power supply for it, that I mounted in the room below. It has been a while since I have been up in the attic to refresh my memory of its setup, but I think pretty typically the pre-amp unit gets mounted near or on the antenna and then the power supply can (and probably should) be moved indoors. This is the amp unit I use.
How do you find the Clearstream 4MAX compares with the Extrema 80?
Both are good antennas, but from my experience running each by itself, the Channelmaster is a better overall antenna. I also think 2 is overkill (my middle name lol). I just use both because I won the clearstream cheap in a bid auction site around here.
For most people, either one should do a good job giving clear reception for the main local channels. Much better than indoor “flat” antennas that Antenna Man calls ‘junk’.
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Just an fyi for those that don’t know, the HD Homerun tuner is only accessible within your own home network via HD Homerun app. However, for those that have Plex (and PlexPass with a running media server), you can hook HD Homerun up to Plex and watch/record through the Plex app. I’m testing that record feature tonight, but ultimately it stores the recorded program(s) on your media server. If set up properly, also, you can watch/record from outside your home network too.
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I was browsing through these and I saw this.
So I just went last weekend and visited my old school friend and his wife, they live on Saginaw Bay in Michigan, Pinconning to be exact. (Pinconning says it’s the pot and cheese capitol of Michigan 
)
He has satellite Internet which kind of sucks but had a giant antenna on the house, moter that didn’t work and pointed away from the closest towers.
We decided to see if we could set it up, so we talked about what was needed and I was pretty sure the antenna was good enough as we talked his neighbor came over and said it’s not a digital antenna. So I explained to him there is no such thing. So yes the idea you need a special antenna is too common!
BTW we got it all squared away, we cut out extra coaxial and spliced it (it was cut off and just had a big bunched tied on the side of the house), repointed the antenna by loosening it and using a pipe wrench for leverage to turn the pole, downloaded a compass to my phone and went to antenna org, got the directions to station, worked great, he gets not a lot of channels, 20 or so but he was really happy with that.
He was talking about dropping DirecTV when I left. I also connected a old Firestick 4k he had but never installed, good friend and I think smarter than I am but a luddite. The 4k worked well, Hughes showed 11 Mbs so, hope it holds, satellite does suck. IMHO
I wouldn’t say there is a such a thing as a digital ready antenna,but there are repack ready antennas.So many of the older antennas were designed with vhf in mind,whereas many of the the repack ready antennas are specifically designed to tune in uhf channels.Some have lte filters and it does make a big difference.
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My comment was in regards to the first comment in the chain elginherd (I think) that mentions people think a “digital” antenna is required.
I replied to that but I see this thread has become a bit of book.
So yes back in the analog days most TV broadcast were VHF but now most TV broadcasts are UHF and that was a direct result of the early effort to go to digital primarily because the VHF spectrum for TV broadcasts were already claimed so as digital based facilities were built they tended to use UHF.
But I was talking about the base band which used to be analog and moved to digital, UHF and VHF are the carrier signals that an analog or digital based band were modulated to.
Today I think it would be hard to find a VHF only antenna designed for broadcast television, sure there are dedicated VHF antennas but I am only referencing broadcast television because that was the original comment and question and my comment was only about the digital base band as it stands today not in the 90’s as digital broadcasts were being ironed out to it eventually adoption in 2009.
So yes, you are correct in your comment.
I have 2 hdhr boxes and the integrate with lotsa apps(not tivimate tho). Sparkler works well, roku, many google/android tv setups, plex, channelsdvr.
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A few observations:
It is true regarding newer antennas need to be tuned to UHF, but UHF existed long before the digital switch-over, so many, of not most, of the old outdoor rigs are still great.
Regarding signal amps, the ability to filter out noise of such an amp is very important.
AFA those cheap, flat indoor “digital” antennas go, how good they are depends on the relative locations of the antenna and the broadcast towers. For some people, $10 antenna is all they need.
Essentially all antennas work the same way. The aim is to create a standing EM wave.
Many of the repack channel frequencies were pulled from the UHF band (channels 37-69 were turned over to wireless companies) and this required putting some back into the VHF band (2-13). These VHF bands trend to have lower power and (particularly bands 2-6) are quite difficult to pick up without a hi-gain, directional, Yagi-type antenna.
Unless you live in a big city, near to a tower, forget the “flat” antennas. And usually, antenna amplifiers just amplify noise and make any problems worse!
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If you live across the street from a broadcast tower, 100%. Please don’t spend a ton of money on the highest end equipment. For most of us, we are a decent amount of miles away from these towers. That is when you want to invest more into your OTA setup. The flat antennas on Amazon false advertise the heck out of these things. In reality, it has a very small radius that it is effective, and the data they give you to sell the product is a flat out lie.
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lol I have seen some advertise 500 mile range.
I love my Televes DAT boss out here in the sticks,it works very well.
Agree 100%.
A friend of mine who uses a cheapie flat indoor lives literally less than 0.2 miles away from me and roughly 8-12 miles from the various broadcast towers but gets great signals because his window has great line of sight…my house doesn’t.
You nailed it, If I relocate/move, the ota reception will definitely come into play in my decision where. I don’t watch a lot of ota but it’s great for local news and prolly other things. Depending on where you live there can be a crap-ton of channels available.
OTA can literally be a life saver.
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One of the biggest issues for ota peeps is pointing the antenna in the right direction. My antenna is in my attic and I get over 100 channels from about 45 miles away.
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