So in order to make sure that we are all properly tuned in, I hereby declare that I am not the owner of the featured image on this page.  As my part of giving credit whereupon credit is rightfully due, I admit that I downloaded the said image from eBay.

Growing up, my parents always had cable.

I guess because of where we lived, we needed it if we were to watch television with any comfort or ease.

We lived about forty to fifty miles from New Orleans and sixty miles from Baton Rouge, so the only way to easily catch broadcast television was to erect an outdoor aerial antenna. My parents flat-out refused to do so.

At the age of eleven, I started to discover the differences between cable television and broadcast television.

It was right then and there that I decided for myself that broadcast television received over an antenna was far more authentic than cable television received over a wire. That is the best way I can describe how I feel about it. I still feel this way in my mid-thirties.

I first experimented with a television antenna briefly in the summer of 1998 at the age of eleven. I caught WWL-TV out of New Orleans.

Three years later, in the summer of 2001, I experimented again with a television antenna and caught WDSU-TV again out of New Orleans.

I was bit by the bug and catching TV signals over the air became an obsession for me.

While I didn’t have my own television set, I did eventually have a now obsolete television audio receiver, a Coby CX-17, which helped me with my experiments of receiving TV signals over the air.

In the summer of 2003, I finally had my own television set and I bought a set of VHF rabbit ears and a UHF loop. For the next few years that is how I watched television though the picture was snowy most of the time.

In the late fall of 2007, I discovered digital over-the-air television and was thoroughly impressed.

In the late Spring of 2018, while going through a divorce, I acquired my apartment and refused to subscribe to cable. Instead, I had a wall-mount antenna that served me well until Hurricane Ida, which destroyed my apartment and one of my televisions.

From December 2021 until April 2023, I stayed in an Ida Sheltering Camper with its own preinstalled rooftop antenna.

In April of 2023, my current and I fervently pray forever wife and I moved to the New Orleans suburb of Westwego, Louisiana.

We also inherited a bedroom television from my Paternal Grandparents’ estate.

I ordered a new remote for that television and an antenna.

The antenna I ordered is a Clear TV Premium HD Mini Antenna and that is what this piece will be a review thereof.

I had seen infomercials for this product, ironically on broadcast television for years.

Usually, I write off most things sold in infomercials as mediocre at best and I know from personal experience that the really good products more often than not, sell themselves.

Despite all the hype on the infomercials, this antenna is simply a basic, entry-level model.

However, I know that since I am in an area that is closer to television transmitters than I have ever lived before, I do not need a high-end antenna as long as I am here.

Furthermore, I forget what it was selling for on those infomercials but I paid only $9.82 for mine on eBay, and that included taxes and shipping.

It arrived on our doorstep this past Monday and I set it up as soon as I woke up.

I initially said in a related piece that it caught 65+ channels. The total number of channels it caught was 70, but some of them are duplicates.

But all of the channels come in clearly.

I do have two complaints, however:

The first complaint is that if either my wife or I get up and stand between the television set (the antenna sits on top of it) and our window that faces New Orleans, the signal will cut out. I am thinking of rearranging our bedroom for that very purpose.

Secondly, it sits on top of a flat-screen television, it should have had a clamp or something to keep it secured on there because my wife or myself bumps into the television stand the antenna falls and I might utter a few words that I ought not to utter.

I don’t think it would work out in the Gulf of Mexico as the infomercial claimed, at least not under normal conditions, but in proximity to any city with a substantial television market, this is all one would need to watch broadcast television satisfactorily.

I never tried it in a rural setting but I have tried other rabbit ear antennas in a rural setting and the results are marginal at best.

There are a few wall-mount antennas I have used in rural settings which performed very well, especially when paired with an amplifier. I will have to write a review on some of those in the future.

So, yes I have always found watching television over the air to be more authentic and dare I say even romantic as opposed to that miserable cable penis that breaks into homes and molests the residents’ finances.

And not only that, watching television over the air may [or may not] have an initial startup cost, but in the long run will pay for itself with the savings one will get from not paying for subscription TV.

I have said on numerous occasions that cable has, at some point around 2010, plummeted in quality yet somehow skyrocketed in cost.

In my opinion, cable television is not worth it anymore, even though my opinion is quite biased.

The infomercial for this product had some partially correct statements in it.

I guess this, therefore concludes my review of the Clear TV Premium HD Mini Antenna.

If I had to give it a rating it would be 4.85 out of 5 stars, because of the need to be by a window and the insecure footing.

I hope that you, the reader, have been informed, enlightened, and maybe somehow entertained.

May God richly bless you!

Back to “Product Reviews”