Skip to main content

August DTA240 High Gain Digital TV Antenna Review


August DTA240

Cutting the cord is a trend that has gained momentum in the U.S. over the last year.  Cable companies have seen record numbers of customers cut the cord on many of their TV services due to the unreasonable price increases and contract politics of  pay TV.   At the moment, I am one of those subscribers and have recently gone the Internet only route with an Antenna, and a Roku.

As someone who has had cable for over a decade, I have been used to my broadcast channels in HD.  Luckily, over the air broadcasts are now 1080i HD signals as well.   I had some "rabbit ear" style antennas and setting those up, I was able to receive most of the basic stations minus ABC and WPIX in New York City.  The stations that did come in were clear, much clearer than my cable signal most of the time due to there being less compression.   With that said, I do not like rabbit ears sticking out of my clean looking set up so I went on amazon and came across the DTA240 antenna which mostly had favorable reviews and is priced right at only $10.  

The DTA240 can easily blend in as to rarely be noticed by guests.

The first thing that I noticed upon receiving the DTA240 is just how small it really is.  It's tiny compared to any other OTA antenna that I have seen.  It also has a nice and solid metal feel to it unlike most cheap antennas made out of plastic.  The bottom has a magnetic base that increases the reception quality when you set it on a metal surface.  The antenna part is just as solidly built and feels like steel with the only cheap looking part being the actual connection cable.  The coaxial is your standard "screw in" type of connector.

HD is crystal clear with almost no sign of compression

Once I connected the antenna to my metal window sill and scanned for stations, I discovered that this is quite a powerful little antenna as it picked up 45 over the air channels.   My rabbit ears antenna picked up 31 channels at best and took far more room and adjustments per channel.

The digital channel guide is handy is a pinch.

Quality can go up to 1080i

Broadcast quality looked great most of the time (rarely is any signal perfect for ALL channels) maxing out at 1080i and with program info working on my channels.  Even for stations that did not come in as well, I just had to slightly move the base of the antenna to fix receptions versus having to adjust the rabbit ears to certain "V" shapes per station.  With almost all of my channels coming in perfectly with the DTA240, that was rarely a concern.

For a small and low cost antenna with no powered amplification the DTA240 is an impressive performer that I can wholeheartedly recommend for anyone who wants to cut the cord.

Source: Amazon

Comments

  1. As somebody who has had link for 10 years, I have been utilized to my telecast stations in HD. Fortunately, over the air shows are presently 1080i HD motions also. smart home audio visual

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clean up your Facebook activity log with Absterge

Lifesperience is now Raycommend, which can be found here:    Ray Commend   Facebook is a platform that tends to elicit many different reactions from people when asked.  Whether you love it or hate it, every day millions of people from all over the world and all walks of life log on to the site or one of its various apps to catch up with family and friends.  As the years go by, one tends to build up a lot of content and in the case of many, some embarrassing content can be buried deep within your timeline. The fact that Facebook's settings can be confusing, even though they have tried to simplify them does not help. We're now in a day and age where many employers look at Facebook accounts long before they consider hiring you, so how does one clean up without spending hours manually clicking on on timeline icons?  Enter the Absterge script. According to the Absterge page: "Absterge works such that a user logs in to the Facebook Timeline, and navigates to the

Retron 5 hacked to launch RetroArch and play ROMS off your SD card

It appears that a someone going by the screenname of  RetroN Labo  on Youtube has successfully hacked the Retron 5 console to run the full version of  Retroarch.  In the video shown, various emulators that are not part of the original firmware are playable including the PC Engine, Playstation One, Nintendo DS, and Wonderswan.  As the stock firmware from the Retron 5 is programmed to load games from an original cartridge when it is inserted, this hack appears to run ROM and ISO files, most likely from the SD card slot built into the back of the console. In most of instances shown in the video, emulation appeared to run smooth, and the games previewed looked playable. Currently, Hyperkin (Retron 5 manufacturer) is in hot water with Retroarch's creators due to using their emulator cores without permission.  After being discovered, Hyperkin has shared their code, and claims that they have removed any infringing code from their console.  The Retroarch group feels diffe

Run Android Apps on the Dell Venue Pro 8 with Bluestacks

Android Apps integrate into the Modern Start screen. Those of you that follow my blog are aware that I recently purchased a Dell Venue Pro 8 ( reviewed here ) and am pretty happy with the performance and usability for the price.  In that review, I compared it to the Google Nexus 7 , another one of my favorite devices.  For those of you who are not that familiar with the various ecosystems, when it comes to touch apps, Microsoft is a distant third place behind Apple and Google.   While the Microsoft store has been slowly getting more apps geared towards touch devices, there are still many notable apps missing such as HBO GO, or Showtime Anytime, Temple Run, Instagram, etc.  Some times there are third party replacements, and some times there are not.  The good news is that you may not have to wait to use your favorite app on Windows 8.x.  There is a program by the name of Bluestacks  that will allow you to run Android apps in Windows as close to natively as possible.  Think of