Home - Rather Disappointed
Winegard HD8200U Platinum HD VHF/UHF Antenna Reviews
Price:
$117.30
$189.95
2-Day* Free Nationwide Shipping!**
Availability: Usually shipped in 24 hours if sold by Amazon.com***Rather Disappointed by Paul E. Ely @ Sep 13, 2009
This unit was purchased to replace a 20+ year old antenna that was somewhat corroded and had several bent or missing elements. The old antenna was pulling in all of the local Baltimore stations well, but reception of Washington DC area channels (particularly UHF) was spotty at best. After reading the overwhelmingly positive reviews here and elsewhere, I had high hopes that the HD-8200U would improve my reception substantially.
As others have noted, the instructions do leave a bit to be desired. With careful review and some common sense, though, assembly is not too difficult. In general, the antenna appears to be well constructed. I did encounter one manufacturing issue, however, when attempting to join the front and rear sections. A bolt hole that had been punched in the tube had not been done so cleanly. The result was a large "burr" on the inside of the tube that needed to be broken off and filed down before the parts could be put together.
After completing assembly and mounting the unit in the same orientation as the previous antenna, I hurried into the house - anxious to check out signal strengths and rescan for any additional channels. I was surprised to find that I had in fact lost several stations. The receiver was no longer detecting DC channels 4, 5, 20, and 66 at all. I spent considerable time adjusting the antenna rotor, but to no avail. Signal strengths for all of the local stations (both UHF and VHF) are quite good but about the same as with the old antenna.
I am not running a preamplifier, but I really expected this unit to perform at least as well as my previous weather-worn, beat up antenna without one. This has been a waste of both time and money for me.