The Top 3 Outdoor TV Antennas from an Installer

This video provides the top 3 outdoor TV antennas for three scenarios. The first one is someone within 60 miles of the broadcast towers looking for a smaller antenna. The second represents someone within 80 miles of the broadcast towers with mostly UHF stations. The last represents someone who does not care how large the antenna is and wants as many stations as possible. Look into installing these with a preamp for best results. If installing outside make sure antenna is properly grounded. Subscribe to my channel for future TV antenna-related videos.

Note that it's possible none of these models will work for your area. To sign up for a custom antenna recommendation visit my website:

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Antennas Direct ClearStream 4V (VHF and UHF up to 60 miles)


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[AntennaMan]

📡If you aren't sure which antenna would work best I do offer custom antenna recommendations on my website:

[gracevalriofarms]

People who share their knowledge freely are pure gold, especially in these troubled times. Thank you SO very much AntennaMan for your excellent videos in language most people can understand. May you live long and prosper.

[xLCHe]

This guy's advice saves me $50 a month. I cannot recommend his paid personal analysis enough. One of those rare services that actually pays for itself

[mariusszostek]

YOU ARE AWESOME TYLER! Have lived on top of a Mountain in South Schuylkill County for 35 yrs, Couldn't get cable since beginning from the LOCAL YOCAL CABLE CO. that was right down the field from me (Until Comcast Bought it out, got rid of the FRONT END EQUIPMENT and CUT IN THEIR FIBER FEED...Now I COULD BY A NEW HOUSE WITH WHAT THEY ESTIMATED to get cable...lol) So have relied on making my own system of Antennas and amps over the years. I was also an AMATEUR RADIO OP for about 20 yrs. Thank you for the Great Model and Price Tips Guy!
THIS GUY IS THE REAL DEAL...HE KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT! (An Old Ham Radio Saying, "Ya want MORE SIGNAL?...Ya gotta put MORE METAL UP IN THE AIR!!!")

[stevenbonovitch]

Excellent about 50 years ago I worked after school and weekends with a tv repairman and installed several antennas and in the 70s the brand everyone that were in the business installed was Channel Master I’m glad they are still in business. Thank you for the very informative video

[TexasScout]

FINALLY! Someone that REALLY knows what he's talking about. Well Done!

[josephb]

Hands down the best video covering TV antennas and what factors to consider. Also one of the easiest to watch and hear the information needed. GREAT JOB

[evanstanek]

Thanks for the helpful info! Helped a brother in law leading into football season get his antenna up and running at his new house. He's about 45 miles out and in a low area, lots of foliage to contend with so not an ideal setup. He had the $50 ONN "150 mile antenna" on his roof, so we gave it a shot...traced out the cabling and corrected some connection issues and dialed in the antenna point. Hooked up and Picked up some UHF, but all very low and lots of pixelation, so I looked into this antenna and your honest review gave us confidence that replacing with your recommended more formidable channelmaster would do the trick. And it DID, picked up the VHF (FOX) that has his preferred football team, the Packers and also grabs channels from 60 miles away at basically a perpendicular point from another market, additionally his signal strength is several bars up using that antenna over this one. You can't change physics, picking up VHF requires longer elements for the longer wavelengths of the lower frequencies.

[pilotprophet]

Some good information there. I'm a Master Electrician, cut the cord over 15 years ago. Do all of my own antenna installations, those are good picks. Years ago I worked for a Satellite TV business doing installations.

[jyoungbr]

OK, here to say you gave some great advice. I became a cord cutter just after Covid hit. Finally dropped Direct TV and the $150 / month bill and went out and purchased the antenna at the 1:00 mark (prior to seeing this video). I mounted it on my roof facing north towards where the bulk of the signals would be coming from which most is over 50 miles away. I picked up 6 - 10 channels depending on the day. I figured that was what I could expect since I live in a valley. The whole point of this endeavor was to pick up the local news channels because my wife wanted them over anything that we could get streaming. I couldn't receive any of them with this current setup. I was disappointed in the antenna motor for the fact that you could not tell which direction it was facing without physically observing it. So I invested in an RCA antenna motor which was cheap enough ~$110 but had some horizontal force issues that could break off the top of the motor. So I rigged up a system that would mitigate the horizontal wind force on the antenna and I was in business. I could now rotate my antenna 360 degrees and knew exactly which direction it was facing. It ended up I could rotate my antenna S-SW and pick up about 15 channels but still no news channels. Well, now still trying to figure out ways to improve my system I turned to youtube and ran across this video of yours. upon seeing your "Antenna's to avoid" section, I was like "Hey, I have that one." So when I saw your recommendation at the 4:52 mark for low lying areas, I decided to give that one a shot. Mounted it in place of my other antenna plus adding an additional 5' to the mast because of the way it mounted to the mast. Faced it north and was able to pick up ~28 channels without moving the antenna, I also was able to pull in some of the local news channels. SUCCESS! going a bit further, I picked up the Channel Master signal amplifier and I increased my channel count to 38. Even better! So the last thing I just did was add the Channel Master frequency filter to weed out cell interference and boosted my channel count to 42. All without moving the antenna. Sorry for the long winded story but I just wanted to say thanks for the advice and I also to help anyone else that would happen to be in the same situation. FYI, I also just added the Amazon Fire Recast to my system and now I can record, pause and rewind live OTA tv signals.

[johnprtl]

Wow, thanks for doing this! I have AT&T streaming, but they don’t have the PBS that I like, or the side channels for the other local stations.
It’s great to see a straight up guy sharing his knowledge. I hope you get a lot of sponsors from your industry.
An endorsement from a guy like you would have value to them.

[daneabc]

Antenna Man: My compliments on the technical accuracy of your YouTube videos, which I have only recently come across and been watching. I am a semi-retired electrical engineer in Northern California; I worked for an engineering firm that designed radio and TV stations; that is, the selection of a site, transmitting antenna pattern, pattern orientation, beam tilt, and all the myriad of technical requirements the FCC requires for a grantable application. Still do a few TV applications on a "consultant-to-the-firm" basis.


I am currently in the process of replacing my Channel Master Titan 2 preamp, which finally died after 12 years. Will install the dual-input version that Channel Master now offers, which will allow me to remove the 3 dB combiner. Since that combiner was before the preamp, it was a critical 3 dB hit to my OTA reception, causing occasional pixelation on some of the DTV signals from Sutro Tower. I expect rock-solid reception reception with the new preamp.

[vinyl_guy..]

Probably the first guy I’d ever seen that has any sense in OTA TV. This is one Underrated channel

[DaimyoD]

Damn it sure is convenient that I've chosen your channel to learn all of this from and I am inside of the Philadelphia market as well lol.
Much respect to you for making this wealth of information available; it's clear that this is just as much a passion project for you to return television to its status as a public service.

[enumrob]

Great review and tech advice. I've been playing around with tv antenna's since I was a kid, I'm in my 50's now and I learned you can't beat the old school antenna's like the channel master. I'm a HAM radio guy so the big TV antenna just blends in with the other 4 antennas!

[stevec]

After ditching Xfinity triple play at $170/month, I hired a guy out of NJ to come install my OTA RCA antenna here in Wilmington. He mounted it on my ranch house chimney, so probably 20’ up in the air. I receive about 35 channels (including sub-channels of the main channels). I have more free programming then I ever imagined now. I had also signed up with Verizon for their $49.99/mo. internet used for my PC and also my Smart TV streaming services, Netflix & Apple TV+. I learned many things subscribing and listening to this guy, for that I thank you for all you made me aware of. BTW, I am 23 miles btwtcf from the antenna farm in Roxborough, & interestingly, though I don’t receive Ch. 12 PBS, I receive WNJS out of NJ somewhere, somehow.

[earlc]

Thank you for all the work you've done without your knowledge we would all be clueless and with a lot less money in our pockets. I'm in Arizona.

[robertnavetta]

I have a antenna on my roof that looks identical to the channel master 3020. It's been on my roof since 1978 and it works like a charm. I am very glad I never took it down.

[turnerbrewer]

10 year cord cutter here. I live 50 miles south of Atlanta.I have the CM4228 mounted in my attic w/ a preamp. I am pulling in 65 stations from ATL at full strength. The CM4228 is an excellent antenna.

[Ken-zopb]

Great content. Soon as I heard you, I knew you knew. Thanks for the excellent introductory information repeating the basics helps folks like me jump into any video and right away you catch up the new person.