Winegard LNA-100 Boost TV Antenna Amplifier, HDTV Signal Booster, HD Digital VHF UHF Amplifier, Indoor HDTV Ultra Low Noise Amp (USB Power Supply), White

I have a Winegard Freevision antenna on the roof mounted pretty high up. But I’ve been having some issues with occasional picture artifacts like a line appearing intermittently on some channels. I had an old RCA coaxial amplifier that I tried first and it did nothing. So I bought this Winegard amplifier and it immediately made the artifacts go away and the signal strength is way up too. I use a TiVo Bolt and it has a pretty poor TV tuner in my opinion. I had been contemplating getting a bigger roof antenna and that would have been costly and more complicated. This was cheap and easy. It clearly works for certain use cases like mine where you are already getting a pretty good picture quality/signal but don’t expect it to bring in channels you don’t get at all or very poorly.

When my most-watched channel started pixilating and blacking out this week (after 4 years of no problems), I investigated and saw that many of the amplifiers went bad or weak over time. So I was hopeful that this product, LNA-100, would resolve my problem -- it's the same size and type as my old generic one, with bonus that it's from a reputable company. BTW, what arrived from the Winegard Co. is labeled 'Boost' brand. Bottom line is that it simply did not work with my setup: outside antenna/inside amp-to-tv (which was my original setup). The picture & sound that came thru were crystal clear, but I went from 117 digital channels with old amp down to 24 channels with this unit, and yes I scanned and re-scanned. However; I found that when I disconnected Winegard and reconnected my old amp, my weak channel now came in perfectly, which leads me to suspect that cleaning the connector points may inject some life into an older setup. I then undid the old and re-connected the Winegard, hoping that it would now fully perform, but I got the same, lesser, results. And, yes, I re-scanned after each iteration. I'm posting this only to share info that may help some. I'm not denigrating the Winegard at all, just saying that it didn't work well with my antenna and setup, and that a little connection cleaning might help some in the meantime.

This is a must buy purchase if you are considering to use Antenna TV. I have a ClearStream 2Max Antenna and I purchased RG11 Coaxial cable. My local TV Antenna stations are 25 miles away. The ClearStream 2MAX Antenna has a range of 60+ miles. I figured with the heavy duty RG11 Coaxial and the Antenna alone I should be good WRONG!!!! I picked up 41 Digital channels. 2 out of 3 of my main local TV station Towers had a picture perfect clear image. What is strange is all 3 of the Towers are in the same 1 mile radius. I was recently trying to watch a football game but the picture was horrible. Very pixelated, signal cutting in and out on NBC...I switched to FOX which is a different TV Tower and the picture was clear and no issues. I chalked it up to the local TV antenna to having the issue. I decided to install the Winegard LNA-100 that I bought but was sitting in the box for months. I purchased it at the same time as the ClearStream 2MAX Antenna and RG11 cable but figured 60+ miles range I didn't need it. WOW was I wrong.After installing the Winegard LNA-100 I went from 41 Digital channels to 78. The NBC station that was giving me issues was clear no more squares or line/ signal cutting in or out.Short story even if you think you don't need this Winegard LNA-100 signal booster, install it. It made a "clear" difference.

Antenna amplifiers and pre-amplifiers don't cure all (or even most) reception problems, and this excellent little amp is no exception. Antenna amplifiers like this one that are designed to be used at the TV end of the cable are intended for use with indoor antennas with relatively short cable runs to the antenna. Where long runs are used, a pre-amplifier installed at the antenna is better, and the Winegard LNA-200 would be a good choice.That said, this amp improves the strength of weak signals whose overall quality is still acceptable, while adding the very minimum of noise. In my case (in a canyon with no line-of-sight to the transmitters), the signals are worse than weak, they're either intermittent or completely absent. So this amplifier is of limited value (but not zero).A more serious problem with this amp is that the USB power cable is very short, presumably with the expectation that it will be plugged into a USB connector on the TV near the antenna connector. But my TV doesn't have an available USB connector, so the power adapter for this amplifier must be plugged into a socket on the duplex receptacle that the TV is plugged into, and that's too far away for the USB cord provided. This cord should therefore be similar in length to a typical TV power cord - about 2 meters. Yes, I could go buy a longer USB cable, but that shouldn't be necessary.In summary, this amp does a decent job - if your expectations are correct - at a very good price.