There have been many great quests in the annals of myth and legend – The Golden Fleece, The Rescue of Helen of Troy, The Holy Grail, The Fellowship of The Ring. Here at The Geek Beat, one quest has loomed above all others: The Quest for A Functional HDTV Antenna.

Seriously, we’ve tried them all – indoor, outdoor, amplified – and they’ve all failed miserably. It’s embarrassing, really. The Geek Beat offices are based on a hillside overlooking the westside of Los Angeles; we have direct line of sight to every major digital transmitter in the L.A. basin. And yet not a single antenna we tested could manage to tune in more than one station at a time. Position it to get CBS, you lose NBC. Got NBC? Forget about FOX (actually, if it wasn’t for Bones and House, we would; but that’s for another article). It was truly crazy-making.

Then one day I was prowling around Best Buy, laughing at the inflated prices (Best Buy? Who are they kidding?), when I came across a new antenna I hadn’t seen before – the RCA ANT537 Indoor Amplified Antenna. It claimed it could capture digital signals others couldn’t. Well, really, they all claim that. But I figured, what the heck? What’s one more antenna in the vast graveyard of failed contenders?

To my very great surprise – and to the utter shock of my colleagues – it worked great. By simply placing the antenna on top of the video cabinet and cranking the signal amplifier to max, I was suddenly able to get in the Big Four networks from one antenna. I could even get the CW, although now that Veronica Mars has been canceled, I’m not entirely sure what use that’ll be. The combination of the strongest indoor signal amplifier around (25db) and a sophisticated low-noise filter, apparently did the trick where others failed.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Atmospheric conditions can sometimes result in a choppy signal. And positioning the antenna exactly right is still a critical factor in reception – I spent an hour monkeying around with placement to locate a sweet spot that could hit all the stations I wanted.

Still, the RCA ANT537 is the first HD-capable antenna to work at all in our offices. And for that we’re truly grateful.

Geek-o-Meter: If you’re looking for a way to avoid paying absorbent cable fees just to get CSI in high resolution, and you live reasonably close to a digital transmitter (to check the position of transmitters in your area, click here), then the RCA ANT537 Indoor Amplified Antenna might be just what you’re looking for. It gets a 9 on the Geek-o-Meter.

Just be smarter than I was and buy it at Amazon.com for $35.13, not at Best Buy, where it was practically twice the price. Heh. Best Buy. Right.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm and is filed under HOME, TECH, HDTV, HOME THEATER. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.