Peevey

Has anyone reviewed the new portable indoor amplified PowerQ HD-100 HDTV antenna on Amazon? It’s only 6.5 inches long, received great reviews, and is probably the best looking indoor tv antenna out there. This little known antenna is the best out there.

Aaron62

Is that UHF or VHF or both?

HTNut

It's advertised as "Receives digital TV signals (Channels 2-69) up to 1080i HDTV resolution" but it doesn't specifically say if it's designed for UHF and or VHF channels.

EscapeVelocity

Ive considered checking it out before on a positive review found on the net (cant remember where).

But it looks a little small to be much good.

The Terk TV-1 also gets rave reviews on Amazon and its just VHF Rabbit Ears. So take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt.

I bet that this beats it......

Don_M

Bet it does, too.

For the umpteenth time, I'm going to let the utilitarian in me out of its cage:

1. If it doesn't look much like an antenna, it won't perform much like an antenna.

2. Amplifiers can never mitigate bad designs.

Piggie

It's time to leave it out Don. And I will add...

Virtually nothing is new under the sun on antenna design that wasn't known by the early 1970s with most of the knowledge was known by 1960s.

Even the fancy computer modeling makes it faster to examine an antenna but it often misses. But I have seen software that showed how space directors on a yagi for different results. Confirming what experimenters had determined 30 years prior. After all they modeled the software from known experimental data!

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Next I am about ready to start a one man campaign to stop antenna manufacturers from calling antenna things like:

HD Ready
Works on 1080i
Made for HDTV
Receives Digital
Works for 100 miles......(or any mileage claims).

The one I hate the most lately. This antenna has 34 db of gain.
Bull manure!!!!!!!!! They are adding the amplifier gain to the that of the antenna and it doesn't work that way. An amplifier can't add a single tiny fraction of gain to an antenna system. All the gain is in the antenna used to receive the signal. No matter how many db in the amp, it never makes up for a well designed antenna.

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I will reiterate Don and say if it doesn't look like an antenna it probably doesn't work as well as one that does look like an antenna.


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Also another one. It's 6.5 inches long. That is a half wave dipole at 900 MHz, which is right above the old Ch 83. Any time a dipole is shorter than a half wave it can't even receive 0dbd which means it has less gain the a dipole.

The bowtie is a broad band dipole and has roughly 0db at the center of the UHF band.

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So I could feed the end of a paper clip I straightened out molded into a cool looking piece of plastic with a 32 db amp and advertise it as 32 db of gain.
After all every piece of metal receives every frequency to some limited (often very limited) degree.

Short answer. Junk.

EscapeVelocity

LOL!

I agree for the most part.....however...

An amplifier can increase the range of an antenna, by boosting the signal recieved by an antenna which is too low for a tuner to tune. It cant amplify nothing, but it can amplify signal that is too low for the tuner.

Thus it can stabilize signals on the "digital cliff," and also provide images on channels just under the digital cliff with regards to a particular antenna/tuner combo.

Now I wouldnt want to hazard a guess on what the range is, but I think it safe to say that it gives you 3db.

Now it must be stated that if the antenna doesnt give you enough of a clean signal to amplify, it cant create signal out of nothing, so the elements are of primary importance....but an amplifier can help and is beneficial especially for those with limited space and fairly far from the towers with lower signal strength transmissions available to capture. People close in usually dont need amplification....and it can actually hinder their reception as it can overload the tuner. (this wont hurt the tuner just your reception).

In fact tuners generally have their own amplification stage at the input side.

Back to you!

Piggie

You are confusing lowering the noise floor with gain. An amplifier never adds to an antennas gain. It adds exactly 0db.

Now that said. If the amplifier has a lower noise figure that that of the receiver then there is an improvement in signal.

Your figure of 3 db improvement is about right on most modern receivers, since most of them are in the 4 to 8 db noise range (it's impossible to say since I've never seen it published except others like me guessing).

So now add an amp to the system with 2 to 3 db noise figure and you lower the system noise floor by your approximately 3db, and you do see a better picture.

Things to remember

1) amp gain and antenna gain can not be added together
2) low noise amps are essential to see an improvement on cliff signals with an amp
3) when you add an amp to a system the entire system takes on the noise figure of the amp. (note with a high noise amp this can make things worse also).

EscapeVelocity

Right it doesnt add to the gain of the antenna, but in relation to the tuner it does, thus adding to the systems performance(gain).

Its incorrect to state that amplifiers arent useful in antennas systems for anything other than overcoming transmission line loses, splitter, and other gizmos which introduce loses.

EscapeVelocity

Ive seen noise figures ont eh CECBs, Ill see if I can relocate them.