HomeWorX HW110AN Super Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna

Remember when I wrote that the Cable Cutter is the best antenna I’ve ever seen? Well, it still is. But while I was testing it, I also discovered that the simple indoor antenna I was using as a baseline was also really good. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the HomeWorX HW110AN Super Thin Indoor HDTV Antenna is the best antenna I’ve ever seen for less than $10.

First, a housekeeping note. You may have noticed that some of the links in this post are affiliate links to Amazon.com, as are several other links throughout FTABlog. Thanks to the Colorado legislature, I don’t get paid for those links any more. Because of an ill-advised sales tax collection law passed in my state, Amazon cut off all of its Colorado-based affiliates. Maybe when something sensible happens, like Congress passing a national online sales tax bill that treats every company fairly, then those links will start earning a trickle of money. Until then, they’re a handy way to grab product photos and provide a convenient link for you to find out more.

Back to antennas. If that HomeWorX name sounds familiar, it’s because HomeWorX also makes the digital converter box that I reviewed as a weak DVR a few months back. Like that sub-$50 converter/receiver, the HomeWorX antenna is inexpensive – under $7 on Amazon as I type. It comes with the pictured stand, which is really a mechanical suction cup, making it easy to mount on a window or wall.

I’ve gone through a lot of cheap TV antennas, but the HomeWorX is the first to hold its own against serious, expensive antennas. I noticed that as I set it up for my Cable Cutter comparison tests; mounted in the right place, the HomeWorX picked up almost all of the channels that the Cable Cutter found, just with reduced signal quality. It was about equal on VHF channels, but noticeably weaker in the higher UHF channels, particularly 41-45.

After noticing that strong performance, I took my HomeWorX to my basement, where an old TV picks up a few channels from a powered antenna by a window. I plugged in the HomeWorX to the same spot, and even though it’s not amplified, it easily beat that old antenna. That was so startling that I left it there and ordered another HomeWorX, which has performed just like my first.

One reason it’ll never replace the Cable Cutter is the HomeWorX is definitely an indoor-only antenna. It rectangle of soft, flexible plastic wouldn’t stand up for long against the elements. But if you can find just the right mounting position next to a window, and if your local channels’ signals are strong enough, this HomeWorX antenna may be all you need.

As I mentioned in my last post, the most intriguing find from last year’s NAB Show was the prototype of a Tablet TV receiver. As you can read from its press release at the time, Tablet TV was to be an over-the-air DVR streaming to nearby “portable devices with no subscription fee, cable, satellite or Internet required.” Not only would users be able to watch local OTA, they’d also have access to selected on-demand movies, delivered to the receiver by a local broadcaster.

Tablet TV was formed as a joint venture of London-based Motive Television and Granite Broadcasting Corporation, and the idea that a broadcaster would embrace an OTA DVR excited me most of all. The business model with on-demand movies wasn’t just a benefit for viewers, it was also a carrot for other stations to monetize the service. I also liked Tablet TV’s promise of free guide information, presumably using the electronic program guide (EPG) information embedded in local TV broadcasts. The press release promised a fall 2014 launch, and I just couldn’t wait.

In late August, Motive’s CEO staged a well-promoted demonstration at San Francisco International Airport, but Tablet TV didn’t formally launch in San Francisco until two days before Christmas. A month later, its receivers went on sale for folks outside the Bay Area, and I purchased one of the first to test here in Denver. A few days later, I opened the iPhone-like box to find the receiver and its accessories packed inside. But for its outward polish, this unit performed as if it were an early beta version, apparently hard-coded for San Francisco TV stations and barely able to pick up a few compatible Denver signals. In late February, Tablet TV released a firmware update which greatly improved my receiver’s functionality. The Tablet TV folks have promised more updates within a few weeks, but I thought I’d bring you to date on how it looks so far.

The receiver, called a T-Pod, looks just like the prototype – an extra-large bar of soap with a short, telescoping antenna. It comes with a mini USB power supply to charge its internal battery and a micro SD card for recording programs. The bad news is that the T-Pod has no input jack for that great antenna on my roof; the good news is that its tuner is surprisingly sensitive with just its little built-in antenna. Setup was an awkward two-step of getting my iPad to use the T-Pod’s internal WiFi for an initial conversation, then switching both to the home WiFi network. An initial channel scan later, it was ready for business.

Remember that part about pulling in the broadcast EPG to use as guide data? It turns out that broadcast EPG information is spottier than the FCC had mandated in the digital TV conversion. The Tablet TV folks still hope to find a way to use whatever EPG data is available over the air, but for now, the unit gets a lot of it from an online provider. So now whenever I launch the Tablet TV app, it spends a minute or so pulling in guide data over the internet.  Then after I verify that I don’t want to rescan channels, it displays the schedule page (see right).

Notice the channel numbers in that grid; I don’t really have a Channel 1 in Denver. Instead of listing true or reported channel numbers, Tablet TV sorts the channels by dot-one (primary) or dot-two (digital subchannels) then numbers the channels by the resulting list. This brings the major networks to the top as you’d find on a cable TV box, but for those of us who know the “real” numbers, it’s like typing on a keyboard ordered A-to-Z instead of Qwerty – helpful for novices but frustrating for experienced users. Further, the network logos aren’t always accurate. For example, in the screen shot, the third channel’s logo is KRON, San Francisco’s MyNetwork station, but it lines up with Denver’s CBS affiliate. That makes finding the right channel like typing on that A-to-Z keyboard with some of the keys mislabeled.

The plan is that once the viewer spots a program to record from the grid, he taps it, then verifies the recording request and that’s it. For me, that’s all that happened; when I returned later, I saw it had not recorded my request. When I asked a Tablet TV guy who’d been giving me tech support about that, he wrote back, “The Scheduled recording feature works, however there have been some issues we are now aware of.” So I when I tell you that I can’t make it work, keep in mind that the feature works somewhere. Manual recording and playback are also squirrelly at best, but Tablet TV plans to fix all of these recording issues in future maintenance updates.

For some reason, the grid has significant holes in it, with missing information for occasional channel/times and some entire channels. The grid also includes an unintended trivia game; every movie is titled “Movie” with only its description as a hint. Example: “The legendary outlaw brothers of the Jesse James and Cole Younger gangs rob banks.” What’s the movie? Check the file name for the graphic on the right side if you’re stuck.

One way that the T-Pod is different than most DVRs is that it’s possible to unplug the T-Pod and bring it along to stream to tablets away from home. The battery will work for several hours on a single charge, but not overnight. As a practical matter, the T-Pod needs to be positioned near a window for good reception and within range of its power supply cord.

Once Tablet TV fixes its recording problems and its guide, that will still leave the question of what is its niche. The OTA DVR market is already getting a little crowded with the TiVo Roamio OTA, Simple TV, Tablo, DVR+, and even the venerable Windows Media Center. The Tablet TV T-Pod is portable, but so is a portable digital TV. Tablet TV won’t charge a subscription fee, but neither does Windows Media Center or the DVR+, and it’s pretty easy to get a lifetime subscription for Simple TV. Tablet TV’s competitive advantages might be its lower initial cost (just $90), local broadcaster promotion (if that happens), and a reduced dependence on the internet. But first it needs to just work right. We’ll return to the Tablet TV when there’s more to report.

Update: I noticed that The San Francisco Chronicle reviewed Tablet TV in January. Even with the home-market advantage, that slightly earlier version of the service didn’t impress those reviewers.

My vision of Dyle’s target audience.
© Depositphotos.com / mindof

When I recently wrote about the welcome proliferation of over-the-air TV digital subchannels, or “dot-twos,” I overlooked an important part of that story: It proves that one of my predictions was right. In this case, it was my prediction and contention that dot-twos are a much better use of broadcasters’ finite bandwidth than mobile TV, especially Dyle TV.

With the current version of ATSC, North America’s digital TV standard, you can’t watch if your antenna is in motion. That’s a real limitation, and engineering groups went right to work on a version that could handle movement. Long story short, many of the broadcasters formed the Mobile 500 Alliance, while others backed an offshoot, Dyle, which required user authentication.

From a techie perspective, mobile TV sounded like a good idea, but as I pointed out, there’s no real market for it. Mobile TV’s target audience would be passengers within a metropolitan area who want live TV, but who aren’t in a subway tunnel. Did broadcasters really believe there were enough gadget-packing bus riders to make that work? Worse, each mobile TV channel took bandwidth away from another possible dot-two for stationary viewers.

Yet another hurdle was getting enough stations to broadcast mobile TV channels so viewers might want to buy mobile TV devices. As I wrote about Dyle in particular, “Any new service is going to have a chicken-egg problem, but Dyle has few chickens or eggs.” The best TV markets had only five or six mobile channels available; Denver has exactly one. It’s hard to convince a bus commuter to spend $50 or more for a phone dongle if that’s all it’s going to provide.

How bad is it now? When I scrolled to the bottom of Dyle’s FAQ page, I saw that the Belkin Mobile TV receiver, which had been on the market for less than two years, stopped working on January 1, 2015 because Dyle no longer supports its iOS app. Ditto for mobile TV reception on the RCA Mobile TV Tablet, which Dyle had announced and promoted at the International CES 2013. Sure hope you didn’t buy one of those.

On the other hand, I’ve still got the mobile TV dongle that Escort was kind enough to send me in June 2013. As I said in my review, it really worked. And it still works, bringing in that lone Denver channel whenever I test it. (I wonder how much of the iPhone dongle problem came from mistiming Apple’s transition from 30-pin connectors, which the Escort relies on, to that little Lightning thing. But I digress.)

I know for sure that the Denver station is still broadcasting, and Dyle’s site still shows lots of other active markets. On the other hand, Dyle’s news page shows no press releases since June 2014, and there’s that unceremonious New Year’s dumping of its Belkin and RCA receivers. The Mobile 500 Alliance was still alive as of April 2014, but you’d never know by its web site.

Broadcasters are currently negotiating and working out details for what will become ATSC 3.0, which should support 4K screens and mobile devices. I predict that by 2025, a bus rider will be more likely to be watching a dot-two on his cell phone than anything based on Mobile 500 Alliance technology. By then, Dyle will be known as the broadcast version of Microsoft Bob.