Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As I was cutting out DirectTV for free HDTV, I did a LOT of research before purchasing this antenna and when I did so it looked to be the best choice for the reasons mentioned above. I was ready to switch to free TV right at the beginning of the year, Jan 2014. Upon arrival the antenna seemed to reflect the cost immediately. It was shipped in a plain white box and some of the contents inside were damaged. The plastic housing for both the preamp/rotation receiver and the remote were of cheap quality, and both had medium chunks were the plastic had broken off during shipping. Despite this it seemed quite obvious the internal components weren't damaged, so I assembled the antenna and took it to the roof. Having done my research on antennaweb, tvfool, and the .gov sites I positioned it to it's best location and attached it using the cable and mast from the DirectTV dish (I simply removed the dish and put it in the garage). I went down and saw that I had 30+ channels with excellent quality. I couldn't believe how easy it was. My wife and I spent the next week or so adjusting to the new HTPC I had set up and then enjoyed free TV for the following weeks rather seemlessly. Then came February. Around mid-February channels started to freeze up. At first I thought it might be weather related, but there wasn't any snow. I attempted to move the antenna via the remote control that came with it and discovered that it was indeed flaky, and that when it did pivot it would go in whatever direction it wanted regardless of whether I pushed the Left or Right button. Finally I digressed and went to the roof to manually swing the antenna. My wife manned the TV channel checking while I did the manual movement of the antenna. It was facing about 45 degrees to the east this time when the channels started coming in clearly. I left it again for another month and a half. This time the channels went out rather sequentially. At first it was a channel here or there that would start to get that digital fragmentation, freeze on a frame, then flip to a blue screen that said "weak signal", Within a week more channels caught the fragmentation disease, and the ones that had it initially simply said "No signal". My wife was working long hours these few weeks, and when I was home so was our 1 year old son, so I had to promise her I wouldn't attempt to risk myself on the roof without her here (which wouldn't do me any good anyway since our son couldn't tell me yet if channels were working). So I bid my time watching our precious free television fade into uselessness. Finally around the beginning of May I was able to go back up to the roof and repeat the process. This time I brought the brand new, previously unused coaxial cable that came with the antenna up to the roof and re-seated the Antenna on the mast. It was a very long process where it seemed that no matter which direction I pointed, few channels were going to come in. Suddenly I struck gold and managed to get all of the channels we had initially gotten when aiming in the exact opposite direction of the incorrect position of 45 degrees off. I figured it was either reflecting oddly (?) or even working backwards (receiving signal "base" first), but was just pleased to have a signal and let it go. Since then I have again fine tuned the antenna position twice more, with incrementally less channels and reception quality since. Now the channels have faded to the point where my wife and I are simply down to 2 working channels, and I admit I've let it happen as I've tired of going to the roof to adjust the thing - I've let go. All of our local PBS channels are gone, FOX, CW, ABC -- all gone. The only ones we receive are NBC (which has always been the strongest signal as the station is simply across the way) and Northwest Cable News. NBC even freezes frequently, and although we only watch it half-heartedly (so many reality shows >.<) it teases us by playing into the faux appreciation of who will be eliminated next to then simply freeze and make us sit in anti-climactic anticipation of maybe never knowing who is left in America that still has "Talent." It might be that the Pre-Amp is no longer functioning in the signal, but I am taking my prior research and re-assessing a new antenna. I apologize that this is such a long and colorful review, but must admit I have need of self-entertainment as I no longer have television to occupy me.