Well it’s been now 2 solid years into our cord cutting process and I can’t thank myself enough for taking this action plan to reality.

Being a little scared at first with the fact of losing out on the local sports broadcasts, being a big Habs “Montreal Canadiens” fan, cutting the cord did represent going in the dark for some games.  Luckily Sportsnet aka Rogers  ehanced the Over the air experience by adding games on the Local Citytv broadcast.  Happy to say that I havent missed many games thus far and the playoffs are just around the corner.

 

Having developed a real passion for OTA “Over the air” television mainly for the savings and not being dependent on anyone telling me what I need as a viewer.  I reached out to Antennas direct to put one of their antennas to a Real world test in Quebec.  Running a quick test you can see that all local stations have emitters for OTA that are roughly 16km’s away from the test location and US stations as: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox are much further 138km’s away.

The review environment of the ClearStream 1 Convertible with a VHF Retrofit Kit.

The Clearstream 1 is directly connect with a 4ft Coax to a HD-homerun 3 made by Silicon Dust.  I did do Outdoors and Indoor tests with the unit as this is a Outdoor/Indoor antenna.

Below you will see exactly the results from the unit showing 3 important figures.  Signal level, Signal Quality, Symbol quality.  The result are pretty interesting for a one time 69$ purchase. No additional monthly fees.  Yes Free once you buy the antenna.

	Indoor Results				Outdoor Results
Real RF channel	Miles From emitter	Signal Strength	Signal Quality	Symbol quality		Signal Strength	Signal Quality	Symbol quality
29	9.3	40	0	0		54	72	100
47	10.1	49	46	85		64	89	100
10	10.3	81	0	0		97	100	100
12	10.3	89	65	100		96	100	100
35	10.3	63	0	0		82	100	100
15	10.3	73	77	100		87	100	100
49	10.3	43	0	0		70	95	100
26	11.4	74	63	100		86	100	100
38	59.9	35	0	0		42	–	–
22	85.9	41	0	0		44	43	–
14	85.9	41	0	0		57	55	100
32	85.9	33	0	0		36	–	–
43	85.9	25	0	0		27	–	–
13	85.9	60	0	0		49	–	–

To the untrained Eye this wont mean much but here is the easy version.

Although the Clearstream 1 can be used inside the results thrive when hooked up outdoors.  In total, outdoors the Clearstream 1 was able to pull in 19 Channels for free.  Radio-Canada, CBS, CBC, TVA, CTV, global tv, ABC, NBC, Tele-quebec, PBS, fox and City.  I do need to mention the US stations come in and out possibly better positioning and using an amplifier would solve this.

The image quality on the strong local channels is unsurpassed by any of the Cable co’s or Satellite / Fiber offerings.  This is TRUE HD, non compressed.

This being said the Antennas Direct Clearstream 1(In Canada the item # is C1C-CA) is more than a viable solution for anyone looking to fetch local channels from 30-40 km’s away, this is by using it straight out of the box.