PBD WA-2608 150 Mile Outdoor Rotator HD TV Antenna Review 

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I bought an RCA medium size antenna when I built my house in 1997. I installed it on the eve of the roof. I think I paid $40.00 for it. I got it mainly as a backup whenever cable was down. I pointed it towards the broadcast towers which are about 40 miles away. I get around 50 channels, ( counting sub channels). It's been working for over 20 years. The Antenna Man is right, don't waste your money on junk! I watch some events like the Super Bowl with it because it has a better picture than cable. Don't buy junk!

As soon as I saw "150 mile" and "HD" mentioned in the title of this video, I had a good idea of how this review was going to go!

That antenna looks like it should be in a low budget sci-fi movie as a ray gun or mind reading antenna...lol

The frustrating part is when you tell people there is no such thing as "HD" antenna and your old antenna from analog days works good, the antenna doesn't care about analog or digital it only receive the frequency band which is designed for, and yet they still buy "HD antennas" because "AS SEEN ON TV". Ah yes even these "HD antennas" in most of the cases performs poor on some frequencies. Most of them have a built in amplifier and mess up your channels especially if you live close to a tower. Not to mention when the amplifier breaks then you really have a junk antenna. My big thanks to you for testing different antennas and tell your real opinion unlike some RU-vidrs which tells you everything is fine. I stick with my Yagi antenna, I don't have any problems.

Love the “Piece of Junk” montage. Keep it up. Thank you for answering our antenna questions especially during these troubled times. Hope these “Recent Events” end soon.

Much better back drop! Glad to see the channel getting better. OTA is gonna be huge in the next few years. Keep up the good fight !

PingBingDing... The sound when you chuck it in the damn trash can..

I tried several antennas and this one got me the most channels by far!

I just had one of those passed along to me; branded "LeadZM." The saving grace is that the previous owner had it in his attic (so it all works). But the big surprise is that it picks up WGBH-2 (Boston), physical 5.

Thanks for all your videos Tyler! I bought the ViewTV version of this for the same price about a year ago before I discovered your channel. (I've since replaced it with a far superior Winegard antenna and channel master amp) For me as a noob at the time it wasn't a complete waste of money as a kit. Since I was placing it INSIDE my attic and still trying to figure out how to do my whole home setup coming formally from satellite, it was decent enough to experiment with to prep for the long term setup I have now. Instead of throwing it away, I even gave it to my neighbor so we could take care of his attic antenna setup and he knows when it dies we can just pop in much better gear. Just at the very least DO NOT buy this to use as an OUTDOOR antenna! If the wind in your area doesn't destroy it first, the summer sun alone will.

Thank you! This is exactly what I needed to hear!

I love this one!! You are killin. Great video. I bought one that you recommended in a link. Nailed it. Now I need to split the signal to three sets. Can't wait for your recommendation. It's gonna be spot on. Thx!

Incredible! Thank you, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you

Good video. I bought this antenna in 2017, installed it on top of my chimney and it's never failed me. Thinking about purchasing another for a different TV and installing it in my attic.

I have this exact thing mounted on a mast on the side of my awning. I bought it before I found this channel. It's actually doing a great job, but I am only about 30 ish miles away from the towers in Tampa FL.

Tyler: I bought 2 of those "wingdingbing..." antennae 6 years ago and they kinda worked for awhile. Because I live in line of sight area to my favorite stations, I figured it was better than "rabbit ears". Both rotors failed in short order. Useless even if they worked because you have no idea which way the antenna is pointing anyway and it will get stuck at rotation limit. Even manually pointing them, the are still more "attenuator" than antenna. Last summer I bought a 8 bay solid signal high band VHF and UHF antenna. It is well built and rugged. I doubt any other "consumer antenna" is that well built -- lots of heavy aluminum. They have it on sale right now. The beauty of that antenna is that you can "split it" so that you can aim 4 bays each at two groups of stations in different directions ( 90 degrees apart in my case -- so I get more stations). I do have a channel master amplifier which I may try, but if the occasional "tiling" is due to sporadic "multipath, that may just amplify a bad signal --- we'll see. Or that tiling may be due to interference from "strong" same or adjacent channels from far away that catch a "tropo" reflection for awhile. That's not unusual in the summer time on calm humid nights. Before I forget, I do have one of those "distribution amplifiers" in the house at the "front end" of where the antenna coax comes down to the basement. It is one of the 4 port units that you reviewed in the past. I needed that because of long cable runs and the need to split the signal w/o incurring loss. I tried using a passive 4 port splitter, but that and the longer cables wiped out all but the strong stations. Distribution amp was the way to go! It runs on 12-24 volts dc. Wish you were RU-vid reviewing the "wingding..." antenna before I wasted $$$ on junk. I spent about the same amount of money on the "Solid Signal" antenna! I have to see how the channel master amp works. I did buy a quality coax lightning arrestor (not cheep). Hopefully that'll protect the amp from all but a "direct lightning hit". I figure the amp is pretty vulnerable! The amp may end up causing more problems than it solves because of some STRONG stations in the mix. I just gotta tinker. Keep up the good work!!!!"

Yes the 150 mile claim is bogus, but I have used this antenna outdoors at my home for two years, Mid-Atlantic region. Mounted at about 20' height. It has performed admirably and picks up 27 channels in my area. It has been through a handful of wind, rain, and snowstorms without issue. It may not last for 10 years, but if it does crap out I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one at $40.

Great video! Love your honesty about the products. Thanks for Sharing your knowledge with us.🌺

I bought one of them at Christmas time of 2019 and and just took it down on 05/06/2020, so less than 6 months and I have had performance degrade. THESE THINGS ARE A WASTE OF MONEY. I unfortunately found you after I bought this. Great video, information and keep up the great work.

Damm I love your channel great information saved my ass a time or 2 Thanks antenna man your a rock star dude!!👍✌️

I have been using one of these fo 3 years. The day I put it up I got a station 200 miles away for a few hours. I normally watch channels 100 miles away

Thank you so much for this! I'm looking at antennas since I've been quarantined. I was tempted by this because of the price. I'm in a fringe 2 edge situation, so I guess it's gonna be a Winegard or Channel Master for me.

Thank you for all you do I love your videos this is more than great information it's an education stay safe,👍👍👍😷

Thanks for the video! I own this antenna. It's within sight of the tv area so I can watch it rotate. Pretty cool. It picks up more channels then my previous antenna which was a clear stream model 1. It is pretty flimsy though. I sealed it up with silicone so hopefully it stays dry inside.

I had one, its gone. Took Tyler's advice, and have good set up now. Thank's Tyler

So glad I found you before I ordered this! Thank you ! I have subscribed and will come back for info later 👍

Your channel is very informative.

Installed a similar antenna and within 50 miles of 2 cities and it picks up real good

Anybody else here old enough that when he says "pingbingding", you immediately thought of Ricochet Rabbit?

Have one like in video. Have been able to pick up stations 75 miles away and get 45 stations. Has been mounted on pole on side of house and has lasted 3 years sofar even through 2 hurricanes. The elements does have screws holding to the boom though.

I have the same antenna, still working over a year now. Bought it off Amazon. The things that saves it, 1 I never turn it! 2 i have the power plugged into a power line conditioner /UPS so no power surges to blow out the RX Amplifier.

I really like that small scene of you really excited as a little kid. I recently had the same level of excitement when I seen my first FREE OTA tv picture upon cancelling Xfinity. I enjoy that same level of excitement every month when I see that paid TV services are NO LONGER taking a monthly payment from my checking account while my crystal clear OTA channels are playing on my TV.

i bought a turkey like this. A year and everything had failed. But it did prove that there was broadcast tv worth having. Currently I'm running a home brew antenna with a "stealth hawk" element.

I actually have this same antenna except the coaxial cable screws into the body of the antenna. I bought it a little over 3 years ago before I found your channel. It's mounted on a 25-30 ft pole & I have no problems getting all 4 network l, public television & religious channels from about 50 miles away. If it ever breaks I'll definitely go with one of your recommendations but as long as it still works I'm not touching it. Guess I got lucky with mine.

There are only a limited amount of frequencies available for broadcasting television. Therefore frequencies have to be shared, and to reduce interference between different stations using the same or adjacent frequencies the transmitters have to be kept a certain number of miles apart. Therefore if you actually can receive a long distance out of area station, whatever aerial/antenna you use, reception is likely to be marred by other stations competing on the same or adjacent frequencies that you may also receive alongside your intended target that will undoubtedly cause problems in attaining a reliable and watchable signal.

I've had this antenna type on my house for a few years. No issues - but I can see it going out any day now. I have a full size antenna in my attic - but I get better reception from the cheap antenna outside. I just can't bring myself to install the huge antenna outside.

I've been using a CM4228 for years now without problems and rock solid reception literally 24/7 on 41 channels, with some of the stations 95 miles away. Once you hit the 100 mile mark distance from the tower forget anything reliable because of the curvature of the earth. At that point the broadcast tower would have to be about 2000' above mean sea level or on a mountain top which is not common anywhere. I've been tinkering with rooftop antennas since 1969.

5 years now getting Tv stations 107 miles away in Wyoming.Worked great in Oklahoma too 100 miles away from OKC

I bought one of these 2 years ago with the thought of putting it on my roof since I had a cheap ebay antenna I was decently happy with from about 10 years ago that was kinda beat. When I got it I was unhappy with the build quality so I decided to do an attic install. Luckily the preamp has continued to work 2 years out although the rotation has been trash since I bought it.

Great video! Some antennas I would like to see reviews of is the Stellar Labs antennas, especially the VHF ones

can we please do a review on shared RF signal issues I heard of more sensitive tuners

I did buy one of these as you called it junk but it was cheap and I was not sure if I could get any service to my new location. Well it is working and I receiving two channels so my experiment is working. I live in a remote place here in Canada Alberta and would like to upgrade my set up any ideas ,the closest towers are approximately 55/60 miles away. An amp is going to be a must . Any help would be great

We live in Arizona what's a good antenna to resist the uv sunshine

I have one of these antennas. I agree that it is flimsy and would not survive outdoors. But I set it up several years ago in my attic and it pulls in the 4 major TV stations which are only 9 miles from my house. So if you live close to the TV stations this might not be such a bad choice for an attic antenna. I'm happy with it so far.

6:10 Can you please tell us, what your Honest opinion is of these antennas ?

Do you need a TV tuner and does it help

Yea I got one like a year ago just put it up last week. I get a lot of Mexican channels here in Chula vista ca. 10 ABC in and out 39 NBC pretty good just can't get 8 cbs to bad I didn't see your site before I ordered different one just waiting any idea any help would be appreciated have moved it Towards all broadcast towers thanks

Have you ever seen the DYI antenna builds on RU-vid? If you build one, how would you do it?

I have had this antenna for almost 2 years and have it on a pole that is 30 foot high- I live 35 miles north of Pittsburgh out in the country and I pickup over 50 channels. It does work very well ! It will pickup up 75 miles each direction so yes 150 miles. I get Altoona,Johnstown,Pennstate,Stuebenville ohio,Wheeling WV and on occasion Youngstown OH.- The rotor works well and my picture is usually crystal clear- Not bad for the money and I did buy a spare one.

You crack me up. This is HILARIOUS.

What do you recommend for truck drivers? We''re in all kinds of cities all over the US

Hey Tyler, We did it! On may 4th, 2020 we went to Playa Tamarindo, Guanacaste in Costa Rica and got signal at 220 km (135 miles) from the Irazu Volcano (broadcast antenna at 3,502 meters), Cartago! We used the Televes UHF LR antenna in passive mode only - our signal meter's 12 V- power source did not work - and got most channels from the San Jose area, except for the weak ones as expected. It is all about a clean line of sight (LOS) between two points! What is next? The radio horizon at 240 km (over 150 miles)!

Thanks You are the Man!!!

I made an antenna out of some 10ga house wire I had laying around the garage. Put it in the attic and picking up around 50-60 channels. No pre-amp, no fake yagi style elements and reflectors (reflectors are for transmitting not receiving), and no need to rotate it to get these stations. I live 40 miles outside of the nearest city, with hills all around. I probably have a good 50-70 mile radius on receive.

Yay, I was #200 liked!!! EXPLOSIOOOOONS!!

I really enjoy watching you say Ping Ding Bing with a serious face

I bought one of these a year and a Half ago. It worked great for about a year then the rotor stopped working. If I moved it manually I could get signal. Replaced it with a 2nd one it worked a few days then same thing. Ended up trashing and going with a Winegard Platinum HD7694P. End of problem and more stations too.

Ok, so I'm a newbie to cutting the chord and bought this before research. I had everything prepped and ready to go. Or so I thought. How the heck am I supposed to connect the power box directly to the antenna with no splitter in between without some clunky cable setup or jumping into my attic and running new cable?

Have you tried Terk's antennas?

I bought one of those at Micro Center for $25 about 10 years ago (or one very similar). It was longer and had a couple more oval elements on it and had a little rotator and preamp on it. It did OK being 25 miles from the transmitters, but it wasn't that great. For $25 bucks though it wasn't bad if you were within 30 miles or so I guess and you had it somewhere like on a covered deck where it wouldnt get wet often. 150 miles, maybe during tropo or e-skip, but thats it. Get what you pay for.

Hi: I enjoy watching your videos. I have even passed them on to my friends. I do have one request. You begin each video with the vhf/uhf and HD antenna discussion. I agree that this is important. However, for those of us who are subscribers could you provide a time marker where you get to the review, so we can skip over the part that we have heard before?

I use a similar antenna on outside of my pole barn, only way for me to get radio stations to come in.

It would be great if you do a video explaining the db gain of an antenna, the front to back db and How it affects recption %. I have a digiwave 2190. But there are some channels that are too weak to watch. I would like to buy a second digiwave 2190 and combine them (pointed in same direction with same coax lenghts and a wineguard 7870 combiner). The combiner say -3.5 db insertion loss. So does that mean my 10-14 db gain from my sexond digiwave will drop by 3.5db ? How much % would my unwatchable channel (at 45%) be ? Thanks a lot and keep up the good infp videos. Thay are mounted in attic because i live in Quebec and we get kick ass ice storms, winds of 50mph, snow. So i feel that my antenna would not last long on roof.

I Would like to know what antenna you use and I am nearer to Chicago I would like to know what you would recommend for somewhere in Indiana

Joe Tech loves this antenna. He gave it an "instant awesome" while stating it was cheap plastic.

I knew what you were going to say before you even said it! ha! Do you have any suggestions for receiving low powered transmitters? I'm about 20 miles away and can't even detect the signal with my yagi style antenna on a 15' pole. Topography is very flat here.

I bought a very similar model made by boostwaves at least 5 years ago delivered to my house in Pa. for about $32.00. I love it, I get about 45 channels and most of them are 59-61 miles away. I live in northern Lancaster County and get most of the UHF channels from Philly and Baltimore. It does suck on VHF and the rotator doesn't work in the winter after 4 yrs. But if there's an antenna that can get me FOX5 out of D.C. (91 miles) please let me know

I wish I had found this sooner. I have been using a ping ding ding. But I think I can do better. So today I ordered a Televes! I got the one that does High and low vhf and uhf. The preamp and filtering sold me!

Good information

FLAT Earther's probably buy the 150 Mile Antenna. Lol

There are quite a few variations of this antenna out there and the one I had, I bought at a flee market for $40. It had no name and no manufacturer address in the instructions but it looked better built then this one Antenna Man is showing. It worked well in my area but like Antenna Man says It'll go bad eventually. I got about 2 1/2 years out of mine and the rotor didn't always work plus the original coax cable it came with was no good. The rotor problem might have been do to the 130 foot cable run. Now I have one of those giant sized Yagi antennas with no amplifier that I replaced it with. It works well for all my local stations but this style antenna is a highly directional and doesn't pickup any stations off the back side like the old antenna did so consequently I actually get less channels now. The good part is I still get ALL my locals and it's so powerful even with a 130 foot run they all come in strong without an amp. So I don't have to worry about a amp ever going bad and it should give me years of trouble free service.

I have the same antenna ! Explain to me why when it’s raining my channels come in perfectly and only when it’s clear I can barely get a channel in I get about 69 channels ! Why only hafe the time the channel come in ?

My first antenna was on similar to this which i paid $20...it did work ok but is crap compared to what i use now....I did alter one thing to it though. The small "U" shaped pieces go into the plastic but are not connected to anything... the only thing that can pick up a signal is the rear large "U" receivers. I daisychained a wire to all the small u's and connected those to the rear u's on either side....It did help mine....

I’ve had this same antenna for a few years now and have never had a problem with it, it picks up more channels than any other antenna I’ve owned and the fact that it rotates makes it even better. Highly recommend don’t know why this guys hates on it

Is there any omni directional that actually works AND that I can mount in the attic?

I’d love a review of the Televes DigiNova Boss. It’s what dish network installs.

So antenna snob what do you reccomend? As a layman I was about to buy this but not now, I want a decent one.

Tyler, Thanks for warning against the PBD antenna. I inherited two antennas (one that looks like the RCA outdoor Yagi and the other looks like the Winegard HD7694) and augmented those with a Televes 560483 Dual input preamp. I pointed those to the towers in SE Houston (35 miles away). I also got the Televes DiNova Boss mix antenna and pointed it at the SW Houston tower 40 miles away). Now I get 150+ stations.

Oops. I wish I'd seen this before I ordered this antenna. On the plus side, I've owned it for over a year with no problems. On the downside, I haven't had time to install it yet.

Thanks again for the review. When I first saw it will all of that light weight plastic, It would never survive our NW Oregon Storms. When I saw the dinky coax, I knew it was junk for sure. $50 is a lot of money for junk. $50 can you an Antenna Direct unit that does work well.

Hi ANTENNA MAN! - great video as usual ! I wonder if you have any comments on another model remote controlled rotor based antenna LAVA HD2605? Have you had any experience with this model?

Kyle hear is a tip for your viwers if you have old antenna in the attic or on the roof and it seems to be working great ....change out the old rg59 cable and lots of times you simply do a channel rescan and you pick up a few extra channels becuse with signals changing from anolog to digtial rg59 some times loses frequency I have simply change out the old rg59 cable wire and more channels appear

Lmao "PingBingDing"

Hello Antenna Man, I hope you and your family are in good health. You had me Laughing on the Ping Ding Ling Antenna. You are so right about plastic poorly made antennas. The antennas from my past have always bin made of some type of metal. I was studying for my Ham License. And it is correct that you should have the correct size elements to actually give you a good strong signal from the TV transmitters. And to all the youtubers out there. Most solid objects can cause signal reflection even trees can cause signal reflection. Radio waves traveling at long distances need something that can properly capture the signal.

Try the PBD Outdoor Digital Amplified Yagi Antenna! I got it and it's surprising what you get for $30. It's on sale and after messing with it a lot, I figured out moving around the VHF element and UHF element connected directly to the pre-amp has improved my signal for the channels I want. Like the VHF channel I couldn't really get far far away now comes in after I moved the UHF elements out of the way of the VHF element. The VHF channel is about 63 miles away and there's lots of trees around and it picks up a watchable signal.

You need to do a video on the HDfreeUNLIMITED antenna from the infomercials. It looks like they are using the Antop AT-400B Big Boy 80 Mile, with a different front cover.

Hey Tyler I must be extremely lucky having this antenna on my roof for two years. It even now picks up Youngstown which is 75 miles from my house not that I was trying cause I live Southwest of Cleveland. It somehow made it through a storm that a tornado came through my town and never lost my Fox station as I was watching for where the tornado would go. I will consider myself lucky that the whole antenna is still on my roof, but when it does go I will take your advice on a new one.

Guess I got lucky had it for 2 years and been through 3 tornados and still going

I have a couple Clearstream antennas that I put together in different directions(I know, that is generally a no-no, but I haven't had any ghosting issues) after researching where to put them, and it really worked well. I bought them about 5 or 6 years ago, and no problems. But recently my absolute favorite tv station(MeTV 25.2) won't come in and I am flaggergasted. The only trouble I ever had before was every once and a while during bad weather, it wouldn't come in for about a night along with some of the other stations in that area, but then by the next day they were all back. And like I said, that didn't happen very often. I had seen, from MeTV when it was working, that we were supposed to have to rescan the channel, but that wasn't supposed to happen until June here. So thinking maybe it happened a little sooner, I rescanned, but still nothing. I am really at a loss as to what to do. I do remember that sometimes I think the neighbor's tree used to interfere just a little bit at times when the leaves would start to bloom, but even then it wasn't all the time and it wasn't that bad. During the rescan I was able to pull in a bunch of other stations that I don't even want, so that was no help. Any advice or ideas as to why this happened would be appreciated.

It works really well as longas its turned in the right direction

Good job bro

It really is called “Pingbingding”? I thought you made that up! Sounds like the signal is “Wai Tu Lo”...😄

Do you have a recommendation, I need an outdoor antena capabale to receive signals 450 miles Away

Support 2 TVs at the same time without a splitter. Does that mean that both TVs have to be on the same channel or I can independently control them both?

That name, I can't say it without smiling.

Just to feel like a child again I bought this antenna then touched the glowing red heating element on my stove. I need a hobby.

What would be very cool for this channel is if you did videos about how people can make their own TV antennas.

What would be a great antenna????

I bought this POS thinking that my proximity to NYC meant antenna performance was a non-issue. Wish I knew your site earlier.