Winegard LNA-100 Boost TV Antenna Amplifier, HDTV Signal Booster, HD Digital VHF UHF Amplifier, Indoor HDTV Ultra Low Noise Amp (USB Power Supply), White

I used this with a small outdoor broadcast TV antenna that I have mounted inside the attic of my house. I use over-the-air broadcast digital HDTV rather than spending money on cable. However, a new large house is under construction next to mine, blocking the direction towards the broadcast antennas that are about 30 miles away. Also, I have a 100 foot cable run from the antenna down to my entertainment center in the family room. So, what had been dicey reception became downright unreliable. I inserted the Winegard LNA-100 TV Antenna Amplifier between the antenna and the cable in the attic to boost the signal. This is not exactly the way that this product is designed to be used - it is designed to be inserted at the TV end of the cable run. However, as any radio engineer knows, it is much better to insert the amplifier at the antenna end because you want to boost the signal before it is attenuated by the cable. The most important factor in this situation, even more important than signal level, is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). If the amplifier is inserted at the TV end of the cable run, the SNR is not improved because both he signal and the noise are amplified together. However, when the amplifier is inserted at the antenna end of the cable, the signal is boosted above the noise that enters over the cable run, thus significantly improving the SNR. I chose this product (even though it isn't exactly designed for this type of installation) because of its claimed super-low noise specs and because I have been pleased with Winegard products for about 50 years now. I don't have the instrumentation to measure or verify the specs, but the results are fantastic! The reception is now solid as a rock, and my video system receives all kinds of minor TV channels that I didn't even know existed.Please note that this product is for indoor use only. Also, I had to install a power outlet in the attic to power this amplifier. Finally, the connectors are the wrong gender on both sides for mounting it at the antenna end. You will need f-f and m-m F-connector adapters to install it at the antenna end of a cable run. Also, if you do have a long cable run like mine, be sure to use high quality RG-6 cable. If you have cheap RG-59 cable, upgrading the cable alone may improve your reception.

When my most-watched channel started pixilating and blacking out this week (after 4 years of no problems), I investigated and saw that many of the amplifiers went bad or weak over time. So I was hopeful that this product, LNA-100, would resolve my problem -- it's the same size and type as my old generic one, with bonus that it's from a reputable company. BTW, what arrived from the Winegard Co. is labeled 'Boost' brand. Bottom line is that it simply did not work with my setup: outside antenna/inside amp-to-tv (which was my original setup). The picture & sound that came thru were crystal clear, but I went from 117 digital channels with old amp down to 24 channels with this unit, and yes I scanned and re-scanned. However; I found that when I disconnected Winegard and reconnected my old amp, my weak channel now came in perfectly, which leads me to suspect that cleaning the connector points may inject some life into an older setup. I then undid the old and re-connected the Winegard, hoping that it would now fully perform, but I got the same, lesser, results. And, yes, I re-scanned after each iteration. I'm posting this only to share info that may help some. I'm not denigrating the Winegard at all, just saying that it didn't work well with my antenna and setup, and that a little connection cleaning might help some in the meantime.

Antenna amplifiers and pre-amplifiers don't cure all (or even most) reception problems, and this excellent little amp is no exception. Antenna amplifiers like this one that are designed to be used at the TV end of the cable are intended for use with indoor antennas with relatively short cable runs to the antenna. Where long runs are used, a pre-amplifier installed at the antenna is better, and the Winegard LNA-200 would be a good choice.That said, this amp improves the strength of weak signals whose overall quality is still acceptable, while adding the very minimum of noise. In my case (in a canyon with no line-of-sight to the transmitters), the signals are worse than weak, they're either intermittent or completely absent. So this amplifier is of limited value (but not zero).A more serious problem with this amp is that the USB power cable is very short, presumably with the expectation that it will be plugged into a USB connector on the TV near the antenna connector. But my TV doesn't have an available USB connector, so the power adapter for this amplifier must be plugged into a socket on the duplex receptacle that the TV is plugged into, and that's too far away for the USB cord provided. This cord should therefore be similar in length to a typical TV power cord - about 2 meters. Yes, I could go buy a longer USB cable, but that shouldn't be necessary.In summary, this amp does a decent job - if your expectations are correct - at a very good price.

I have a Winegard Freevision antenna on the roof mounted pretty high up. But I’ve been having some issues with occasional picture artifacts like a line appearing intermittently on some channels. I had an old RCA coaxial amplifier that I tried first and it did nothing. So I bought this Winegard amplifier and it immediately made the artifacts go away and the signal strength is way up too. I use a TiVo Bolt and it has a pretty poor TV tuner in my opinion. I had been contemplating getting a bigger roof antenna and that would have been costly and more complicated. This was cheap and easy. It clearly works for certain use cases like mine where you are already getting a pretty good picture quality/signal but don’t expect it to bring in channels you don’t get at all or very poorly.