The tried-and-true bowtie antenna under test. Note the high-tech antenna mount.
The HD Quad under test.
The CC Aerowave under test.
Channel Master's StealthTenna 50 under test.
The performance of each antenna was verified with an AVCOM spectrum analyzer, Hauppauge Aero-M USB stick receiver, and TS Reader software.
DOYLESTOWN, PA. The cord-cutting landscape has changed considerably in the past 12 months, and it's no longer a fad, but a growing trend as more and more consumers decide that they can get by just fine without expensive pay TV channel packages. In fact, Comcast reported recently that they now have more subscribers for broadband service than for pay TV channels, which accords greater importance to Comcast's failure to acquire Time Warner: The combined companies would have controlled broadband distribution to a disproportionate number of U.S. homes.
While Internet service is the key part of cord-cutting, free over-the-air television still pays an important part. Think of the Super Bowl, the NHL Stanley Cup and NBA championships, and the NCAA Final Four championship game.
But there's also a lot of good programming on free TV right now. In recent months, my wife and I have used our Channel Master DVR+ and TiVo HD to time-shift and watch The Blacklist, American Crime, Brooklyn 9-9, The Good Wife, 60 Minutes, American Odyssey, CSI, Blackish, Saturday Night Live, and Mr. Selfridge (plus a host of one-time PBS programs).
Throw in some Netflix streaming (House of Cards) and there's plenty to watch without Big Cable. So a balanced cord-cutting approach should incorporate both broadband and terrestrial broadcast TV.
To get the former, you need a fast Internet connection and a late-model Wi-Fi router. To get the latter, you only need some sort of antenna to connect to your television or receiver/DVR, like the Channel Master box, TiVo's Roamio, Tablo, or Mohu's new Channels product.
Blessed with a few days of nice weather, I decided to excavate my pile of review products and found three antennas patiently waiting for testing. The first was a rather odd-looking design from HD Frequency, called the CC Aerowave ($49 with 12-foot cable from www.hdfrequency.com). It resembles a small window with a 75-ohm coaxial balun attached to the inner corners of two panes.
The second antenna came all the way from Australia and goes by the name HD Quad ($39.99 from www.hd-quad.com). It's a flexible, transparent antenna with UHF collinear elements, not unlike many other antennas I've tested.
The last antenna is a bit larger and is a six-element VHF/UHF yagi, and comes from Channel Master. The StealthTenna 50 (CM3010HD, $29.00 from www.channelmaster.com) can be mounted indoors or outdoors. It's small enough to sit in a closet or attic space, or even in a room think of it as functional art.
I also found a new inline signal preamplifier from Antennas Direct. The Juice UHF/VHF Amplifier ($79.99 from www.antennasdirect.com) can be used inside or outside and provides about 18 dB of signal boost with a low noise figure, which is real handy in areas where TV reception can be problematic. (Successful digital TV reception is all about signal-to-noise ratio!)
THE SET-UP
For this round of testing, I dusted off my tried-and-true UHF bowtie antenna, once available from Radio Shack but largely ignored by retailers today. (Seriously how many of them want to sell a $5 TV product?) I set the bowtie up on a folding table in my home office and attached it to a large cardboard box with masking tape. While that part of the test was decidedly low-tech, I then connected the antenna lead into a two-way splitter, with one leg going to a spectrum analyzer and the other going to a Hauppauge Aero-M USB tuner, connected to my Toshiba laptop.
This arrangement allowed me to see the actual waveform and signal strength of each TV station under test. I could then verify successful reception with the Aero-M, and to close the deal, look at the actual MPEG-2 video stream from each station using TS Reader. These three measurements gave me a very concise report on the performance of each antenna.
If you go back to my last round of testing in November of 2014, you'll see that I used the same antenna position (different box, though!) and same test gear. The only possible differences in testing would come from the amount of foliage on nearby trees, as my house is partially blocked from the Philadelphia/Roxborough antenna towers over a20+ mile path. (In other words, an ideal site for indoor TV antenna testing!)
The Philadelphia TV market is unique in that it has two high-power, low-band VHF TV stations KJWP (Independent) on channel 2, and WPVI (ABC) on channel 6. There are only 40 or so low-band DTVs in operation nowadays as that part of the RF spectrum is susceptible to impulse noise and strange propagation enhancement. Antennas that work well from channels 2 through 6 (about 54 to 88 MHz) are also very large a half-wavelength dipole for channel 6 needs to be about 68 inches long!
There's also one high-band VHF operation on channel 12, WHYY (PBS). The rest of the Philly DTV stations are active on the UHF band, starting at channel 17 (WPHL) and ending at channel 42 (WTXF (Fox)). In addition, I can easily pick up three DTV stations from the Allentown area: WBPH-9, WLVT-39 (PBS), and WFMZ-46 (Independent). There's even a repeater for WTXF on channel 38 that shows up on my home antenna array, plus WNJT-43 in Trenton.
Table 1. Here's how each antenna performed with 11 VHF/UHF test channels.
THE TESTS I picked a handful of stations to verify reception: WPVI-6, WBPH-9, WHYY-12, WPHL-17, KYW-26 (CBS), WUVP-29 (Univision), WCAU-34 (NBC), WYBE-35 (Independent), WLVT-39, WTXF-42, and WFMZ-46. Any of these antennas would be doing an outstanding job
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The tried-and-true bowtie antenna under test. Note the high-tech antenna mount. 
