Home > Consumer Reviews > Winegard SS-3000 Amplified Indoor UHF/VHF Antenna

Went from 2 UHF channels with rabbit ears to 13 UHF channels with the Winegard SS-3000 in the 78642 (Central Texas) area. Farthest tower is 31.3 miles. [...] reported three different colors for the Antenna Type for this location - yellow, blue, and violet. Received stations in all three colors with this indoor antenna. Excellent reception for all the channels. Product was very easy to assemble and connect. And, the antenna is Made in the USA.

I live about 10 miles from the broadcast towers in Portland and am able to get full reception on all the local channels.

My TV room is in my basement, and I had trouble getting good, reliable reception. After installing this antenna I get great reception.

At first, I had it just sitting on the table next to my TV, but the wife complained. I thought it looked like an object of art, but I was out-voted. I ran some coax through the wall and into my laundry room and placed the antenna on top of my water heater. I am still getting good reception, even though the antenna is now sitting behind another wall, a heating duct, and some gas and water pipes.

I am a very satisfied customer.

I did notice that the further the antenna was from my HDTV, the better the reception. There seemed to be some sort of EMI coming from the TV that interfered with reception on a few channels. I don't know if this is the antenna's or the TV's fault.

I purchased this antenna as a last resort...before digital, I was able to receive and watch all the major networks (pbs, abc, cw, fox, nbc, cbs and thensome). Once the switch happened, I had trouble. First, starting out with the rabbit ears carried over from my analog reception...they were okay, pulling in a few stations clearly, but not all of them. Next, I tried a $20 Phillips antenna and it did okay, but still had trouble. I moved that one to the other side of the apartment in the bedroom where it does awesome and was gifted with a Radio Shack UFO-looking remote control amplified antenna. It did pretty well, still had to move it around to get certain channels, though, and often reception would vary according to the weather (no joke!). After I accidently broke one of the metal dipoles one night, which affected it's reception, I turned to a pricey Phillips amplified indoor antenna. It was the worst. In frustration, I went online, read all the reviews for this Winegard antenna, re-checked antennaweb (I live in Jersey City, directly across the Hudson from NYC - the farthest broadcast antenna from me is only 3.9 miles away!) and made the purchase, thinking this would help receive signals that must be bouncing off all of the buildings around me.

Well, not so. The broken Radio Shack antenna does better. The Winegard would have to be in a different position for each channel to be received. There was no one place I could stick it and get a couple channels at the same time. It also had trouble with the lower channels (2 & 4 - cbs and nbc), as in the sound would cut in and out at best.

So, while this might work well in some cities, it's definitely not the best for Jersey City!

As an aside, I didn't find that it was difficult to put together at all. The one thing it's no clear on is which way the reflector should face, or if that even matters...I did switch it around to see if it made a difference and couldn't really tell...

This antenna did not perform any better than the $10 rabbit ears I had on an old analog TV. It's very big and very complex and didn't live up to my expectations.

I have been futzing around with my Terk antenna for almost a year now. I bought this one hoping that it would be better. I was amazed. As soon as I set it up my signal strength went way up. Love this new antenna. With the Terk, there didn't seem to be a difference between amplified or not but on this one there definitely is. I didn't have to spend hours playing with the direction of this new antenna like I had to do with the Terk. Thank goodness!