Oh gosh like so many others I went thru a lot of futzing around trying to get the right combination of antennas and orientation… I first started with some crappy Mohu knockoff but being 40+ miles north of the Boston transmission antenna clusters I think I only got 1 or 2 channels… Like others here, I also picked up the RCA ANT751R and a RCA TVPRAMP1R preamp… which worked pretty well (I checked the AVSForums as they have some specific forums on OTA HD tv) … I also checked tvfool.com for the right general direction to point my antenna in… I used this setup for testing if cutting the cord was even viable and/or if we could live with what reception we got (we also live on a hill and the terrain between my home and the far off broadcast cluster south of us is also a little hilly) … With the ANT751R we got enough channels to run a test over the summer (I disconnected the cable box from the kitchen tv – arguably our most watched tv – and picked up a cheap OTA HD Tuner/DVR {the real crappy $35 chinese knockoff kind - iView 3500STBII Multi-Function Digital Converter Box} … We ran this test for a few months to see if it would work for our family… In the meanwhile I had picked up (and regretted since it turned out to the the source of my primary problems) a SimpleTV dvr… I also picked up a Antennas Direct, inc DB8e Extreme Range Multi-Directional Bowtie UHF Antenna and a second RCA TVPRAMP1R for the DB8e (I got the DB8e as I thought I was having reception issues and needed the larger antenna ) … After a lot of frustration and aggravation it turned out there was a major defect with the SimpleTV tuner and it was getting low or poor signal strength on most channels and would not even tune the local ABC affiliate station (which also happened to give the strongest/cleanest signal – when you hooked the antenna up directly to an HDTV for comparisons) … Before I discovered the major problem with the SimpleTV (I mistakenly assumed my reception issues were with the antenna, the wiring, preamp or orientation… I never actually thought the DVR itself was crap) … {oddly when the same setup was connected to a tv everything worked great, all stations we wanted were clear and strong} … I should also note there were no splits from the DB8e and the wiring was all new… I tried mounting the DB8e in the attic like I did with the RCA ANT751R and then I opted to roof mount the DB8e in the hopes that would fix the poor reception issues … At the advice of some others on the simpletv forums I tried using an HD Homerun dual tuner to check the signal strength with the homerun and a dedicated mobile app while on the roof (as I use iOS I opted for Signal GH http://genhelp.com/Generally_Helpful_Software/Signal_GH.html) with the help of the mobile app, the HD homerun dual connected to the antenna and being on the roof I was able to get the orientation perfect and verify that the antenna and the wiring was working correctly (the HD homerun tuned the tv stations just as perfectly as the HDTV did) … it was at this point I called into question the simpletv… after reading a lot of great things about the TABLO I opted to purchase one and try a 4 tuner TABLO… the results were stunning… where the dual tuner simpletv struggled the TABLO 4 tuner easily tuned in 2x more channels that the simpletv did and all of them were stable and clear… I was even able to pull in stations as far north as Bangor ME (but those are very weather dependant and there are no stations that are in Bangor that I dont have better more local affilates for) …
My only regret was I didn’t notice the DB8e was UHF only as there is one PBS station that is broadcasting on VHF channel 11 … I might explore whipping up a simple dipole and feeding it into the RCA preamp on the VHF side… but as I already get PBS im ok with not having it for now. (maybe once TABLO has the option to only record shows from specific channels I may revisit this)
Our in home setup is the wonderful Arch C7 router, and I have recently switched all hardwired connections thru a dedicated 16 channel gigabit router… we primarily use desktops with OSX, (one windows laptop), ROKU 3’s and iOS devices to view TABLO content. the Tablo is hardwired directly to the gigabit router and the ROKU devices are hardwired via HomePlug 500mbs ethernet over power adaptors… the only wireless devices are the mobile iOS devices and a couple laptops…