Antop Indoor FM antenna review

I checked out a couple of indoor FM antennas

[@vwestlife]

Powering it with a cheap USB power adapter is shooting itself in the foot because those things use an unshielded switching power supply which generates broadband RF interference.

[@jasonthewiczman5442]

My pioneer VSX-818V receiver still works, fine no related issues, never tried an Amplified antenna,

[@computerguy670]

I found a tuner on my local thrift store that’s the same you used on these antennas. Except it had a different electrical plug at that end, it had a European plug, I found that interesting. The price tag was $35 I was going to buy it but I put it back on the shelf as I’m not sure if it’ll work at all, but yeah that Technics tuner is a pretty cool looking unit, I’ll see if I can find one with our plug here.

[@evgkib1]

Do you pick up many Seattle stations? I think it's really cool living in an area like that.

[@12voltvids]

With outdoor antenna yes but nothing with dipole or this one.

[@EastAngliaUK]

FM dipole end of my garden works best for me and I have a DAB dipole in my loft.

[@chriscutress1702]

I remember years ago when you could attach your tuner via the antenna connection to Shaw cable. Until they changed the system to digital from analog and that stopped working.

[@12voltvids]

They took the FM spectrum to add more digital TV channels.

[@TheEmbeddedHobbyist]

you should compair them to a bit of bent wire! I'd love to know how it copes with a transmitter that's 55 miles away as its 5 miles out of range. 🙂

[@12voltvids]

I think even the 50-mile range is probably pushing it a bit because most stations with the curvature of the Earth will be over the horizon at 30 miles or just over 30 miles. If the transmitter is on top of a mountain then yeah you might get 50 miles out of it but for terrestrial signals over flat ground even from a high tower you'd be really tough to hit 50 miles. Not saying it's impossible a good outdoor antenna up as high as you can get it on your house I'll probably do a little better than that but again you're up against the curvature of the Earth. A station I like to listen to for example is less than 50 miles away but they're in downtown and they're transmitters on top of a 30 story building. The signal is very weak I can barely pick it up in my truck as I get closer to the city no problem but where I am it's a very tough signal to get. I'm hoping that that station will get a better transmitter location because it's really one of the only stations that is even worth listening to in the area. It's a new one that just went on the air but fortunately their services available online so I just listened through my arylic internet receiver boards. Works great in fact I leave one running 24/7 in the kitchen just for some background noise.

[@TheEmbeddedHobbyist]

@@12voltvids And there is me thinking that the earth is flat, bugger why did you have to go and burst my bubble.🙂 So no need for over the horizon radar, just get one of these 50mile range jobbies and you’re good to go. I don't think I’ve listened to AM or FM radio for years now, it’s all internet or DAB. Before that you could be lead to believe that the signals go for 100s of miles, as the car radio would constantly jump frequency so your national station was always there without a break. Well in the UK anyway.

[@12voltvids]

@@TheEmbeddedHobbyist We don't have dab. The experimented with it about 20 years ago and then shut the service down so anybody that bought a radio was kind of screwed. We have HD which is a hybrid digital system here that's carried along with the major FM stereo signals. Wouldn't want to be an FM station that got stuck on a digital sub channel though because there's not a lot of radios. I guess some cars came with radios but neither of mine did they just have the good old AM/FM and in the case of my car the FM radio is not that good and of course satellite radio which they expect you to pay for. I lucked out my satellite radio has been working for years and I've never paid a penny it seems that when I bought my car they activated the radio on demo account and it never got deactivated. I'm not about to tell them either. Had the car for over 3 years and all the XM channels work so I don't miss FM which is pretty spotty in my car even the strong stations sound like they're 100 miles away

[@Devo_gx]

I've noticed that lately about cars: the tuners are definitely not what they used to be. Guess more people are streaming and such so just like modern home stereos there isn't a focus on tuner quality

[@TheEmbeddedHobbyist]

@@Devo_gx My car has a DAB radio, so just set it to the station you want and as long as it can get a DAB signal you have great sounding radio. there are a few stations that are not broadcast everywhere but all the big stations are on every transmitter. so you lose the idea of RF coverage as you can drive the lenght of the UK and the radio just plays the station selected.

[@markmarkofkane8167]

I'm not too impressed with the performance of the antennas. My opinion of course. Great demonstration!

[@12voltvids]

They work ok for local stations. The dipole i showed how to build a few years ago placed high up on a wall will perform better but they are also semi directionable

[@justingalasso1850]

I live in a pretty fringe area and most radios struggle to pick up anything inside my house other than my sangeans and my denon receiver. The only thing that's ever worked for me is putting a long wire outside.

[@12voltvids]

And outdoor antenna is obviously the best choice. If you're living in a house where you can do that great but there's people that can't. If you live in a townhouse or condo you can't really put an outdoor antenna unless you're going to hang it off your balcony but even in that case you may get in trouble with the strata because most of them won't let you put anything out on your balcony that resembles an antenna. I have ham radio friends that have to stick a little magnet Mount antenna out onto the railing when they want to use it and then bring it in when they're not and even that draws fire. I remember when I was doing satellite dish installations 18 years ago 19 years ago I guess I get out to people's places and they lived in a townhouse or a condo or an apartment and they wanted to put up a dish and we had to make up brackets that would clamp it to the railing and just hope like hell that it was up long enough for us to get paid because if they were forced to take it down and cancel their account before I got paid well I didn't get paid. That's always a nice thought when you go out on a job thinking you're going to make a couple hundred dollars to do it install do the work and then 3 weeks later find out that you're not getting paid because the person didn't have permission to put it up and was forced to remove it and cancel their account. The fun ones were when I was told that I had to go back and remove it for them knowing that I wasn't going to get paid for the install and I wasn't going to get paid for the removal those were always the fun ones when I was told I had to do that because if I told the installation company F you I'm not going back guess what happens? Your name falls out of favor on the dispatch list and they give your work to someone else. That's how it works when you're a contractor it sucks.

[@mackfisher4487]

Suggestion how about find an unoccupied frequency in both the AM and FM band, use your signal generator radiate that frequency through the antenna under test to your receiver. If possible use the alignment instructions of the receiver to measure the RF stage voltage, set a known threshold to compare various antennas under test. Not as accurate but you could use the voltage calibration on your signal generator and compare it to how high voltage you need to set to achieve what you perceive as your receiver being quieted.

[@jasonthewiczman5442]

Technics made a good receiver Sa-918 quartz digital

[@heavenplus1]

Simple wires would work better than these 'devices'.

[@12voltvids]

Yes a dipole placed high up on the wall would do better. Location location location. Also a dipole is cut to wavelength. These are for those that don't have space to set up. For that they work fine.

[@zx8401ztv]

I didn't hear much of a difference, Stick to a outside dipole for f.m. If it had a tunable front end it might gain something.

[@12voltvids]

There's no comparison to an outdoor antenna. I was actually hoping they were going to send me an outdoor antenna that I could put up but I got sent a couple of indoor antennas to try and they work as expected. The signal strong they work fine. these are more suited to people that don't want to put up an indoor dipole they don't want to have a wire strung across the wall or they don't want to put up an outdoor antenna which means drilling a hole through the wall generally. For people that want a nice clean install and just want to get their local stations one of these units will work just fine. But obviously anything you can get up higher is going to perform better and a properly tuned dipole is going to perform equally as well if not better because it's a physically larger antenna cut to the resonance frequency of the FM band. In other words it's tuned to the FM band and that is going to provide better reception but again many people don't want to see a piece of wire hanging down or up their wall. and people live in condos and so forth where they cannot put an outdoor antenna up. So for someone with limited space that doesn't want an antenna up on the wall and can't put one outside this is an ideal option for them. Both performed about the same the larger one was a little better at pulling in a couple stations but neither one is a match for an outdoor antenna or even a well positioned dipole.

[@zx8401ztv]

@@12voltvids The polarity of the dipole also needs to be in phase with the t.v / radio transmitters for the best voltage. It does not sound like it matters but it makes a difference. Tell the people that want radio without an antenna to search using the so called "smart tv's" They are connected to the internet so bucket loads of stations will be there. Can you tell that i hate "smart tv's" a computer with lots of crap!. People grab me on regular basis to correct the settings on there Shit t.v lol.

[@12voltvids]

@@zx8401ztv of course the polarity matters. That's why the square antenna you can set it horizontal or vertical which does make a difference. there was a time when all stations pretty much all stations broadcast on the horizontal plane but I think today most FM stations are probably vertically polarized because of cars. Some Steeler horizontal but others are vertical which makes it interesting when trying to set up an antenna because you need to know what your station is using for best reception. I'm with you on smart TVs I hate them. I hate having to deal with customers at work that get all bent out of shape because they've gone and bought the cheapest Roku piece of crap TV they could find and they get upset because Roku makes them connected to their internet and then demands that they set up the TV in order to use it. Even when they don't want to use the smart features they just want to plug it into their cable box which I'm installing on HDMI but in order to connect it to HDMI you have to complete the registration process which requires getting an email from Roku validating a number on the screen on the TV and then they have to enter a valid credit card and receive a two-factor authentication to verify their credit card is valid before they will even activate the TV so that you can select the HDMI input personally if I bought a TV like that and it demanded me to put a credit card in before I could just watch over the air TV or hook it up to a cable box I've been going back to the store with it and demanding my money back. I'm almost tempted just to piss off stores to go and buy a new TV bring it home connect it to my cable and if it doesn't receive analog signals from my in-house system take it back and tell them I don't want it I can't play my VCR through it and see what the reaction I get. I have devices here that only work with analog signals that's just my laser disc an old VCRs and I won't accept just by an AV to HDMI adapter no I won't accept that if a TV doesn't accept analog signals it's not for me. Fortunately for me the newest TV I have which is I think a 2017 or 18 Samsung 4K does still support analog inputs. It has a single AV/component input which use special dongle adapters as well as a tuner that will tune both the HD signals as well as conventional analog signals so my analog modulators work fine with that set. Every other TV that I've got in storage is much older and most still are plasma although I do have a few conventional LCDs. I'm getting back my 37-in xbr6 that I fixed a few years back that my daughter has. She wants a smart TV so she asked me if I wanted my old one back and I said hell yes.

[@zx8401ztv]

@@12voltvids Dam right you want that set back!. There is a lady down the road that bought a smart tv, it never remembered that the hdmi was connected to the sky box and it was a pain to go through the crap menu system. She just made a mess of the settings trying to get what she wanted. It has an annoying interface. Oh the dvd player/recorder and vcr had to be chucked as there was no scart or any analog inputs. I did say What do you watch, she said the standard channels, ahh there was freeview (its not free really) built in and i said use that instead. She is happy now. Im glad that i dont watch tv now. But i keep getting warning letters from the tv licensing company, they are effectively calling me a lier!!. Bloody cheeky bastards!,

[@12voltvids]

@@zx8401ztv for sure. It has 3 av inputs with composite and S-Video, 2 component inputs, 3 HDMI and 1 DVI, plus an RGB input and tuner that has both analog and digital reception. CCFL backlights. Will last forever.

[@tuffytoys9707]

Those antennas seem to do a Shitty Job if they are supposed to bring in Clearer and better reception. Best you buy the wire connector antenna and connect it to the tuner and place it on a wall, it would probably give a better reception than those two shitty antennas. Maybe you could just get a signal amplifier unit by itself and show how to connect it to an outdoor antenna or the wire antenna (Dipole) and demonstrate how strong and clear the signal is as compared to those shitty antennas.

[@12voltvids]

I agree that a well-placed dipole up on the wall is going to outperform these antennas. An outdoor antenna is going to perform even better. I'm not comparing them to a dipole mounted high up on the wall or an outdoor antenna because that wasn't the purpose of this video. It was to show them and demo them for what they are. For someone that's got fairly good reception they'll perform just fine. The market of such an antenna is directed at those who can't put up an outdoor antenna and don't want to have a wire strong across the wall. Believe it or not there's a lot of people that will not put up an antenna if it has to be stuck to the wall they'll take their dipole antenna and just leave it rolled up in a ball and behind their stereo cabinet where the reception is going to be atrocious. For that type of person one of these antennas will do the job. when they offered me the antennas to try I was assuming I was going to get an outdoor antenna like the TV antennas I've reviewed which have worked excellent. I was expecting an outdoor FM antenna and I received an indoor antenna my expectations were not that high and they performed as I expected they would. They picked up the local stations but nothing remotely distant. When I tried to pick up 98.3 for example which is a local station in Vancouver but their antenna is only about 300 ft off the ground and they only have 1,700 Watts as they share the frequency with another station. I cannot pick it up with a dipole on my other system in the house I can barely pick it up with an exterior antenna so I didn't expect that these ones would and they didn't. I can't pick up the station at all in my car like nothing. My work truck because it's a little bit higher I can get it but it's noisy so I wasn't expecting any miracles and I didn't get any

[@farikg_90s40]

Bruh just get a FM yagi antenna

[@12voltvids]

That's what i need. Vertically polarized to pick up 98.3 the wave.

[@jeffadams5510]

HHHmmm.....where I live I can p/u am and fm radio stations 80+ miles away with a good receiver........

[@12voltvids]

If the transmitter is up on a mountain no problem. I can pick up Seattle and they are probably 70 miles away but I need an outdoor antenna to do it.