Streaming may be the new normal, but there's still a place for live TV in our homes. Big events like the Super Bowl or the Oscars are best watched live, while local channels provide access to news and movies without an expensive cable plan. A TV antenna is an affordable alternative to access over-the-air (OTA) channels available for free. The trick is choosing the right antenna for your location and setup.
OTA TV offers a wider variety of choices than you might not remember if you haven't used a rabbit-ear antenna. These days, most of your local TV stations offer two or three different "channels" per station. Besides the big over-the-air networks, there are also numerous smaller networks such as MeTV, AntennaTV, and Comet, which offer older TV shows; Univision, Estrella TV, and Telemundo for Spanish-language TV; and QVC and other home shopping networks. In addition, most stations broadcast their network programs on HDTV. Unlike your local cable or satellite company, they don't charge you a thing for the extra "service."
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To watch any kind of OTA TV, you'll probably need an antenna. If you're lucky, you can still get a decent selection of channels with good old rabbit ears but if not, towers and antennae are still available. I grew up installing TV antennas for my dad's television business and have since gone hands-on with all the brands on this list to determine the best TV antenna for your needs. My pick for the best TV antenna overall is the ClearStream 2Max thanks to its locational flexibility -- you can use it either in your city apartment or on a rural farm.
That said, there is no "one size fits all" antenna, nor is there one antenna type that's better than any other. It all depends on your location and what signals you can expect to get, which I'll explain below. Here are my tested picks for the best TV antenna you can buy right now.
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Amazon/ZDNET
Over the last few years, I've become very fond of the ClearStream antenna family. The least expensive model with the best reception is this $90 ClearStream 2Max. It's my top pick for best TV antenna overall due to its flexibility; it works just as well out in the woods as it does in a city.
This figure-eight TV antenna can be installed indoors or outdoors. It comes with a stand for indoor use and a 20-inch mast with a clamp for outdoor settings. As a nonamplified unit, it doesn't need an electrical outlet and has about a 60-mile range of reception.
Amazon reviewers note that the ClearStream 2Max is easy to install, features solid picture quality, and is a great value for the price. However, it's important to note that unlike many other antenna packages, it doesn't include a coaxial cable.
Also: The best 50-inch TVs you can buy
ClearStream 2Max features: Signal support: VHF/UHF | Coax cable length: N/A | Indoor/outdoor: Both | Reception range: 70 miles
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Best Buy/ZDNET
I was doubtful at first, but the Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna actually delivers great reception at only $20. It has absolutely no frills. You can't point it, it has no amplifier, and it has no signal meter. It's just a simple 11.75 x 8.25-inch rectangle with an attached 10-foot coaxial cable. That's it. That's all.
Nevertheless, this simple antenna does an excellent job of picking up TV channels within a range of about 35 miles, and you really can't beat its combination of price and reception. At the time of this writing, 86% of Best Buy customers who had purchased the Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna and left a review said they would recommend it to a friend.
Best Buy Essentials Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna: Signal support: VHF/UHF | Coax cable length: 10 feet | Indoor/outdoor: Indoor | Reception range: 35 miles
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Amazon/ZDNET
Another excellent small, flat indoor antenna is the Winegard FlatWave Amped FL5500A. This $60 antenna is more expensive than most comparative models but also gets better reception due to its 50-mile range. One Reddit user noted that the Winegard they installed in their attic "has worked great and has an in-line amplifier. Works great with HDHR and Plex."
As an amplified model, it requires either a USB port or a wall socket for power. It has a 3-foot USB cable and a long 18.5-foot coaxial cable.
Winegard FlatWave Amped FL5500A features: Signal support: VHF/UHF | Coax cable length: 6 feet | Indoor/outdoor: Indoor | Reception range: 50 miles
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First, you'll need to figure out where you're going to place a TV antenna. If you live in a city or suburb, you'll probably want an indoor model placed on a window or an external wall. In the country, or if you're having real trouble pulling in a clear signal, you'll want an outdoor antenna.
Let me also add that the range you'll get varies wildly depending on your location, so you should take the range numbers as the best guesstimate. I've gotten channels farther away than the declared maximum range, and some channels wouldn't come in even though they should have been well within range. Again, it all depends on where you are and what's blocking the TV signal from your antenna.
*MSRP at time of writing. Please note that actual price may vary depending on retail as well as available deals and promotions.
Choosing the right TV antenna doesn't have to be a daunting process. If you live relatively close to a broadcasting tower, you can get away with picking up a cheaper, less powerful antenna like the Best Buy Essentials. However, if you live in a more rural area, you'll want something more powerful like the ClearStream 2Max.
When buying at TV antenna, you should consider the following:
Location: Before you consider purchasing an antenna, you must find out what's available OTA in your neighborhood. The easiest way to start is by going to a site like AntennaWeb, Antenna Direct, or the FCC's DTV Reception Maps and using their interactive tools to see what OTA channels are available to you.
Range: For this list, I considered TV antennas with decent reception ranges to suit homes in both rural and urban areas.
Indoor/outdoor placement: It's all about placement. One spot in your home might not get a signal, while another will get half a dozen channels. Still, for some homes, an indoor model won't cut it.
Set-up and installation: The point of switching from cable or satellite to OTA TV is to save money. So, while in the long run, an antenna will always save you money, I also made sure these antennas are simple to set up so you won't need to pay for a pricey installation.
Fifty years ago, I was standing on a 100-foot tower in the middle of the West Virginia hills, installing a TV antenna. In those days, I was helping with my dad's television business. In WV, with few TV stations and lots of hills and mountains, the only way you got TV was by having someone like my dad and his assistant -- a.k.a. me -- install towers and antennas on top of them.
Even though it's been decades since I worked professionally with TV antennae, I still keep track of the technology, and went hands-on with nearly every antenna model on this list. When determining the best antenna, I considered several criteria like range, set up and installation, and price, and consulted experts who are still in the business.
Before shopping for an antenna, you must find out what's available OTA in your neighborhood. The easiest way to start is by going to a site like AntennaWeb, Antenna Direct, or the FCC's DTV Reception Maps and using their interactive tools to see what OTA channels are available to you.
These sites can also help you figure out what the best antenna will be for you, depending on your area. If you're lucky, you'll be able to get all your local channels with a small, multidirectional antenna. You can find these at Best Buy or other consumer electronic stores.
OTA TV through an antenna offers a variety of channel choices. Most of your local TV stations don't offer a single channel, but two or three different "channels." Besides the big over-the-air networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, today, there are numerous smaller networks, such as MeTV, AntennaTV, and Comet, which offer older TV shows; Univision, Estrella TV, and Telemundo for Spanish-language TV; and QVC and other home shopping networks.
A new, better OTA technology, NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, is being deployed at this very moment. This will bring you even more channels, and 4K and High dynamic range (HDR) video. To see what NextGen channels may already be available in your neighborhood, check out the NextGen interactive map.
I grew up dragging 75-ohm coax. RG-59 cable up towers. If that's not you, get someone else to install your outdoor antenna. There's an amazing number of ways to hurt yourself clambering about your roof, and you don't want to learn about any of them. Of course, if you have several strong stations in your immediate neighborhood, an indoor antenna is probably all you need.
If you have an indoor-use antenna, you'll want to place it as close to a window or, failing that, an exterior wall, as possible. If you have an attic, you can also install it there. It's all about reducing the number of obstacles a signal has to pass through before it can be processed by the antenna and sent to your TV.
If you're using an outdoor antenna, you'll want to place it in a spot where it won't be obstructed by rooflines or dense trees. You can do this by either mounting it on an exterior wall or your roof to make sure it won't be blocked by trees or other homes.
You may also want to consider getting a TV antenna with an amplifier. The good news is that these can boost signal strength to help you pull in marginal stations, The bad news is they also amplify noise. With today's digital signals, that's not as bad a problem as it was when analog ruled the airways, but it can still cause more trouble than it's worth.
To properly measure your TV antenna's signal strength, you'll need a special piece of equipment which connects to your antenna's coax cables and reads the signal coming from your antenna and measure how much interference you're dealing with.
You can buy a simple unit like the King SL1000 SureLock for about $30 if you just want to make sure your antenna is pulling in a decent signal. For more detail, you'll want a gadget such as the Augocom RY S110 for about $110.
If you just want a cheap way to figure out which way you should point your antenna to get the best signal, get a smartphone app such as Digital TV Antennas on Android and TV Antenna Compass USA for iPhones.
Like any wireless network, the more barriers there are between you and the transmitter, the less powerful the signal will be. In the old analog days, that meant your image would get snow on it. With today's digital TV, you'll get a sharp, clear image… that breaks up occasionally if you're too far away or something else gets in the signal's way. That can be more annoying than snow ever was.
So, what can you do about it? Well, the same thing I did back when I was a kid: Put the antenna outside on a high tower. Or, you can also try to get the antenna away from barriers like other buildings and trees and look into bigger and/or directional antennas.
Nope. A single antenna is all most of you will ever need. Of course, for the smaller indoor antenna models, you can just add them as needed if you don't want to drag cable around the house. But with an outdoor antenna, you can share its signal with a coaxial splitter. That's a simple gadget that you hook up to your antenna's cable and then split, usually from two to eight, other cables that go to your TVs.
Some of the best splitters are the GE 33526 cable splitter, which can only split the signal between two televisions, the four-way RG6 RG59, and the Neoteck 8-Way Coax Cable Splitter. You can buy the first two for under $10, and the Neoteck for under $20.
If you have over four TVs, you might want to use an amplified cable splitter. My favorite is the $55 Channel Master TV Antenna Distribution Amplifier, TV Antenna Signal Booster.
Sure. There are DVRs for antenna television. My favorites are the AirTV Anywhere line. The AirTV 2, $80, and its big brother AirTV Anywhere. There's also the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Flex 4K, $200.
The AirTV models enable you to combine Sling TV streaming with an OTA antenna. Moreover, with it, you can record broadcasts and stream both Sling TV and local broadcasts over your home network. Indeed, you can watch your local shows even when you're away from home.
The AirTV2 is a two-tuner broadcast TV tuner that connects to your home network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. With an external USB hard drive, which isn't included, you can record and broadcast TV shows using the Sling TV app. The AirTV Anywhere comes with an internal 1TB drive and four tuners. This enables you to record up to four shows at a time.
The HDHomeRun Flex comes with four tuners, two of which are ATSC 3.0 compatible. To use it as a DVR, you'll need to attach an external USB drive and get a $35-a-year DVR subscription. All this requires a bit of hands-on work to set up properly. On the other hand, once it's done, you can watch your recording on any television, PC, or other device on your home network.
PBD/ZDNET
This outdoor TV antenna from PBD features a 40-foot coax cable for more placement options, as well as a 150-mile reception range, and can connect two TVs.
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Antennas Direct/ZDNET
The Antennas Direct ClearStream 4MAX features a 70-mile range, 30-foot coax cable, and a three-way splitter so you can set up multiple televisions. It also has an in-line amplifier to help boost weak broadcast signals.
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