Update.
Good News:
On Friday, I got the Wynegard SS-3000 and the ANT111R in from Amazon.com at the same time. I hooked the ANT111R up in the bedroom, as it was going straight into the TV set, no splitter, DVR, or anything else. The old POS rabbit ears I talked about above were on this, and they found at most 12-15 channels. ANT111 found 40! I was shocked. Not all came in terribly good, but it found a lot.
Moving back to the main room (the one pictured above). I was operating under the assumption that the Wynegard would be better, so I put it together and hooked it up (but without the amplifier, I just ran it into the TV). It worked OK, but didn't get all the VHF channels I wanted (here in Dallas, that's 2(PBS2), 4(FOX), 5(NBC), 8(ABC), 11(CBS), & 13(PBS)). I could get some, but none. Was mildly disappointed, and was sitting around trying to figure out what my next step was. Trying to think if I wanted to get into the amplifier or not.
For the hell of it, I disconnected the ANT111R from the bedroom TV and hooked it up to the main living room TV. Holy crud! The thing worked amazingly well. It does a great job at picking up all the VHF channels I wanted. It also picked up a decent selection of the UHF channels. However, here in Dallas, the majority of them are some sort of Spanish language something or other. The ones that are not I can get pretty well, so I just deselected the weak or blocky spanish channels.
I was absolutely STUNNED at how well the ANT111 worked for me. That an $8 antenna worked better than the $50 powered, much sexier looking antenna was a talking point for me most of the weekend. This all worked so well, I went out to Best Buy on Saturday morning and bought another ANT111, so both my living room and bedroom TV's are using one now. I'm no fool. A proper roof mounted antenna would work better than this. But, given my financial limitations and whatnot, the $8 is doing far better than I had hoped for. The Wynegard was boxed up on Friday night, and an RMA requested from Amazon - they'll be taking it back today via UPS for a refund.
Now I realize that YMMV for antennas and rabbit ears - they're enormously susceptible to a ton of variables that would make it not work at all for you. But for me, in my circumstances, the ANT111R worked brilliantly.
Some Break Up Issues:
Having said all this, there's two channels that I get breakup with. Their signal is strong (at least I think it's strong based on my overall channel signal strength). They're usually 70-80. Yet sometimes I get breakup. Is there anything that can be done? When they work, they work well - and that's most of the time (in my time watching, I'd say it's about 75% no problems). But I would like to do something if possible. I've already tried moving the antenna a little, but moving it too much causes problems elsewhere.
NOTES:
- My report
- TV is a Samsung LN46A650A1F
- Problem occurs on two channels (4-1 & 5-1). The rest are fine.
- Antenna is an RCA ANT111R
- There's a non powered $3 splitter inbetween the antenna and the TV. That's so the Antenna can go to both the TV itself and my TiVo.
After posting the picture below, I wondered. The basket to the right of the antenna holds my spare cables and controllers for the video game systems you see in the picture below. That wouldn't cause a problem, would it? What about the speaker above the antenna in the corner of the room? It's not turned on - those speakers are actually not hooked up to anything (my receiver broke awhile ago), but it is physically still in the room.
Edit:
Here's that corner of the room again. Picture taken this morning:
