[Jeffhs]

I'm not going to expect miracles from this antenna; I'm just interested in how well it may or may not work in my area. I've never used my flat TV with an antenna (it has been on cable since it was new last August), so this should be an interesting and enlightening experiment.

I don't expect to get, with this indoor antenna, the stations listed on TVFool as being 50+ miles from me, but then again all I'm really interested in are the Cleveland network stations and their subchannels (MeTV, Antenna TV and two subchannels of Cleveland's PBS affiliate). If the antenna brings in these stations, the transmitters for which are all over 30 miles from my apartment according to TVF's charts, I will be happy. (The distance is just under 40 miles if you look up, on Google Earth, the distance between Fairport Harbor and the two southwest Cleveland suburbs in which Cleveland's seven TV stations' transmitters are located; I don't know why TVFool is showing the stations as being just 30+ miles from here).

I will not cancel my cable, however, until I have conducted this experiment and have a concrete idea of how well the ClearCast antenna works. I had never heard of this antenna until I saw the advertisement for it in my newspaper last night, and as I said in my last post, I also read online an article from a Syracuse, New York paper that had less-than-glowing reviews of the antenna. It stated pretty much what you said at the end of your post: the ClearCast will not work much better, in most signal areas, than a cheap UHF bowtie antenna.

I also noticed, when I took a closer look at the ClearCast antenna in the ad, that it seems to be useful only for those DTV stations currently operating on UHF channels; I did not see any provisions for reception of VHF DTV channels as well. This may put me at a disadvantage and may give me another reason not to be too hasty about cancelling my cable service, as one Cleveland station (WOIO CBS 19) currently operates on DTV channel ten. There has been talk of changing this to a UHF channel due to possible interference issues with a Canadian TV station on the same channel (CFPL in London, Ontario, across Lake Erie from Cleveland), but nothing has been done yet.

However, I wonder if the designers of the ClearCast indoor HDTV antenna are under the impression that all TV stations in the United States have transitioned to UHF DTV channels by now. As I mentioned, however, this is not necessarily the case. There are still some areas with DTV stations on VHF channels, although such stations are likely in the minority these days.

WOIO CBS 19 in Cleveland, however, does have a new translator station on DTV channel 24 for the Akron area, but I don't think I'll see it here with just the ClearCast antenna due to the distance involved -- over 50 miles from me.

One problem with TV reception in my area is the sheer distance from here to the Cleveland TV transmitters; most people here have either satellite or cable, with the few outdoor antennas left (there are a few still standing) falling apart from disuse and/or age -- some of these antennas are as old as the houses on which they are mounted, and there are some very old houses in this town, dating to the '50s and earlier. I have even seen conical VHF-only antennas here that date to the '50s; of course, most of them have fallen apart by now (I saw one last summer that was little more than a boom on a mast -- most of the elements had blown off in wind and snow storms) and are now worse than useless.

Antenna reception here may not have been much of a problem before DTV (just put up a good near-fringe antenna and you were good to go for the three original Cleveland VHF TV stations, with UHF following in the '60s and '70s), but the arrival of this new broadcasting standard nearly three years ago has changed everything. This is why most people today, even those folks living in cities or their suburbs, have cable or satellite service -- because they just don't want to be bothered with putting up antennas and the reception problems attendant to OTA DTV. I don't blame them.