HD Frequency Cable Cutter Aerowave, Indoor Outdoor HD Digital TV Antenna (CC-17A)

I seldom post reviews of products on Amazon (and I buy A LOT from Amazon) but for this product I have to make the exception. My wife & I cut the cable cord about a year ago and have been streaming everything and when Aereo arrived on the scene we jumped right on it. Thought our cable days were over for ever. When the Supreme Court put Aereo out of business last week the horrible thought occurred to me that I might have to go back to cable (God forbid). I thought about indoor antennae but didn't think it would work. I live on the upper east side of Manhattan (Yorkville) on the 11th floor. My apartment is on the north east corner of the building and faces east. I'm surrounded by high rise buildings including a 40 story one directly across the street to the south which completely blocks the view to the south (and the Empire State Building from whence just about every OTA TV signal originates). I figured there is no way I going to get any kind of decent signal through all this concrete and steel. Hell, I had to buy a WiFi booster just so I could get a decent WiFi signal in my living room because the router was in another room. So I started to research indoor HD antennae. The price range is absurd, anywhere from $6.00 to $100.00 or more. The reviews for this product on Amazon and other places seemed promising but I slightly gagged on the price. But I thought: a hundred dollars is still a whole lot less than a never ending cable bill. I bought it with the thought that if it didn't work out I'd return it and eat the the re-stocking fee (if any) and the return shipping costs. Needless to say the item arrived lickety split as always from Amazon on Monday. Yesterday I hooked it up. Let me just say that hook up is quite easy with one or two provisos. The coaxial cable that comes with the unit has typical screw on/off ends. MY TV (Samsung) has a RCA type plug for the antennae in. Fortunately I saved all the cables & adapters that came with the TV (quite a few) and sure as hell there was the adapter to covert the screw on end into an RCA type plug in end. So check the back of your TV to see what type you have, screw in or RCA plug in. It's liable to save you some aggravation. The instructions tell you to then scan for existing channels. I hope you saved the manual that came with your TV cause you're gonna need it. After about a half hour of looking through my TV manual, I finally found the tiny paragraph that barely explains how to scan for channels. That being said I started the scan (takes a couple minutes) and low and behold it came back with about 58 channels. Let me say here that unless you're blessed with ability to speak multiple languages including Spanish, Chinese, Korean and others many of these channels will be useless to you. HOWEVER, the ones your are looking for (CBS, NBC, ABC, WOR, NET) are all there and the reception is SPECTACULAR. I cannot express how stunned I was. I stood there in front of my tv with my mouth opened. The picture was better than anything we previously got through cable. Here's why: I learned that the cable companies have to compress the signal before they send the signal over their wires. OTA broadcasts are not compressed; so, you get a truly high definition picture. The difference is amazing. If I can get this kind of signal where I live (surrounded by concrete and steel with no view of the south) then unless you live in a bank vault in a basement, I don't see how you couldn't do as well or better if you live in Manhattan. Cannot give this thing enough stars. Yeah, it's one of the most expensive ones out there but think of it in comparison to your monthly cable bill. No contest! (One sad note: I got to watch the USA loose to Belgium on channel 41 [Univision]. Yeah, it was in Spanish which I don't speak, but it was the World Cup and IT WAS FOR FREE!)

My review about the antenna as well as the source many of us used to find this antenna, The Wirecutter.First, I'll say this about my experience with the Cable Cutter antenna. I live in a deep valley south of Birmingham, Alabama. I'm about six statute miles from Golden Crest Drive, the location of most of the city's TV towers. I was drawn to the Cable Cutter after reading the review of it on The Wirecutter. I purchased it on Amazon a few days later, and it arrived promptly thanks to Amazon Prime.From the moment it arrived, the process of using this antenna has been a disaster.A brief word about its design. While it is large and sturdy, it may be an eyesore for those of you using it indoors. There is no easy way to hide this antenna. It is large and unwieldy. It is metal and heavy. It ships with a single Command Strip for mounting on a window or wall. This is the kind of object that requires you to make room for it. Don't expect this to "blend in" to its surroundings. You will notice it.I discovered that this antenna is *very* sensitive. Keep in mind, again, that I'm located just six miles from every TV signal in my city. To optimize the signal, I chose an obvious location -- a window orienting the antenna toward the towers. To my surprise, TV signal strength was weak. We were able to pull in just one station (and its two subchannels) with consistency. The rest were spotty or nonexistent.I tried moving the antenna to other various locations. The signal got worse. I purchased an amplifier and added it to the antenna. No improvement. I'm now down $79 plus the cost of the amplifier. To make matters worse, the cost of return shipping to Amazon for an item this large and heavy was almost cost-prohibitive. I decided to write it off as a loss and send it back anyway.The same day I returned the antenna, I stopped by Target and found a GE amplified indoor antenna on clearance for $19. I took it home, set it on the same table as my TV, plugged it in, and watched as every channel in town appeared.This leads me to the fallacy of trusting reviews from The Wirecutter. I have made several purchases based on their reviews. None of them have worked for me. Here are the reasons you should take their reviews with a grain of salt: 1. They never review a comprehensive slate of products in each category they're reviewing. They drop products from review for what often turn out to be negligible flaws. They consider most products only when you can buy them on Amazon. 2. Wirecutter staff members are the only people conducting the reviews. The typical process will see each staff member using one or two of the reviewed products instead of the entire panel. This sample size is far too small. 3. The Wirecutter uses no control mechanisms for conducting its reviews. For example, they conducted the antenna review only in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Not only that, the staff in these cities reviewed the antennas in their own homes. These locations would have introduced a host of inconsistencies that The Wirecutter never mentioned.There is nothing wrong with reading The Wirecutter's reviews. I will continue to read them myself. But, you cannot take them as an end-all, be-all source for electronics purchases. An antenna is a variable product that may or may not work for you. Making your purchase at a local store with a generous return policy (and hopefully some staff who are knowledgeable in your geographic location) would be far more advisable. Trusting a review process with so many problems is not.