Channel Master Titan 2 Medium-Gain Preamplifier - TV Antenna Pre-Amplifier, 16dB Gain, Compatible with Non-Amplified TV Antennas, Increases Signal Strength, Indoor/Outdoor

Excellent build quality, as always, from Channel Master. Works great with a small attic mounted OTA antenna. I live in a very rural area in the mountains of central Pennsylvania and I am able to get 16 OTA TV channels. With a simple splitter, the FM stereo performance is excellent too! This preamp has just the right amount of gain. More would NOT be better.

I'm an electrical engineer. I designed cable TV amplifiers and other components and very complex commercial receiving systems. I live far out in the country 65 miles from Atlanta and 35 miles from Macon, and just over 150 miles from Savannah. The closest FM station is several miles away, and there are very few commercial transmitters around. Most people would think my location needs a high gain amplifier, but that is not true. I bought two of these lower gain version amplifiers to install at the antennas to just overcome feedline losses and firmly establish system noise figures at the antennas. I wanted no more gain than that, because excessive gain over a minimum never helps signal to noise and will often cause problems. My systems are eight bay bow tie arrays with eight bays at 60 feet toward Atlanta and eight bays at 200 feet toward Savannah. They both have distribution amplifiers at the house entrance. These amplifiers did exactly as planned. They have enough gain to establish system noise temperature by these mast head amplifiers, and not by coax or distribution amplifier noise temperature. A higher gain amp would NOT improve S/N even though I am way out in a rural location. I get all of the Atlanta stations well, with only the weaker of all stations WSB 2.1-2.3 ever having loss of signal. For some reason WSB has never been good here since going digital, so they have some fading with moist atmosphere, ducts, or fog. WSAV at almost 200 miles is rock solid, as are all the Macon stations.

Note: I'm assigning this four stars, since that's roughly the average rating at the time of this review. It did not work for my use case, so I want to help out future buyers with similar needs, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad product. My goal is to improve FM reception on a particular low power station in an urban area. I live in an apartment on the first floor, where I've installed an aerial antenna at roof level inside, but am unable to elevate it or put it outside, which would be better solutions for my particular issue if they were available. Note that I did open the unit up and change the FM switch to "out" before testing, so that was not the issue. I found that the product did boost FM reception, according to the signal dial on my tuner. For very strong signals, it boosted the reception and the audio quality was still good. Practically, however, these were not a problem before, so this didn't matter either way. For moderate signals, it boosted the reception, but introduced extra noise. This meant that moderate power stations that played cleanly without the booster now were practically un-listenable. For weak signals, such as the low power station that I specifically want to improve reception on, it did not seem to boost the signal much, and also introduced noise. Similar to the moderate signals, it sounded worse than without the booster. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue with the moderate and weak signals is interference with adjacent stations. Therefore, I believe this could work well in rural areas with a limited number of local stations, but would not necessarily recommend it for FM reception in urban areas.

I live in a northern Detroit suburb (Lk. Orion), about 20 miles north of most Detroit broadcast towers. I have an Antennacraft MXU-59 UHF on my roof and a Radio Shack VHF in the attic. The system is split to many locations in the house. I had cheap-o Radio Shack amps on both antenna, but replaced the UHF amp with this CM 7778 because the RS amp was going flaky. I like the fact that this amp can be separated into UHF and VHF amplifiers, as I don't want to amplify VHF on my UHF antenna. I installed it yesterday, and right away, I noticed an improvement over the RS amp. I now get a surprisingly strong signal from the ION station broadcasting out of Ann Arbor. Also, I get a strong signal from the Saginaw FOX station that was always weak on my RS amp, even when it worked properly. All the locals are very strong. Now, if Canada would only get their DTV up and running, I'd be getting even more stations. The documentation that came with the amp specs the UHF gain at 23dB. Not sure what to believe since I've seen 19dB and 20dB in many other places. I like the metal case and the power supply is running cool. The only concerns I have are... 1. It uses slide switchs inside the amp to switch the FM trap and the Separate/Combined selections. Antenna signals are microvolt signals and don't tend to be reliably passed through this type of switch. However, if these switches actually control electronic switches on the circuit board, then they may be reliable. 2. The PCB is a single sided PCB. Single sided boards are prone to solder joint failures on through-hole components because the solder bridges between the component and pad. The solder joints actually crack (over time and temperature stress) in a circle around the joint and are plainly visible with little or no magnification. ...as opposed to a double sided board in which the solder wicks up the hole and component leg, filling the hole between the leg and the hole. The latter is much more reliable, and only slightly more expensive to make. Therefore, I may be soldering the component leads on this device in future years, time will tell. I give it 5 stars on performance. It's too early to tell on reliability.

I bought this to stabilize channels I got and to help bring in the ones that would pixelate. I always have two channels, cbc kingston and global. Towers are within 5 miles so signal is always strong. I can weather permitting pull in over 50 channels mostly at night. The cm7778 stabilized the upper uhf channels that were in and out. I chose this over the cm7777 as after reading it might over amplify the strong channels I have. Just note that this will NOT bring in channels with no signal, only help weak signal ones. This unit is very well built, base made of cast metal not plastic and easy to hook up, the directions are off a bit with the picture of the unit in place, cables are reversed, I just followed the written directions. I now plan on getting a better antenna and maybe a rotor. I have sattelite with no hd, and love watching especially hockey in hd. Amazon is a great place to shop, always great service.

Unfortunate I had to return the product because it was really that good. My 7 year old 7778 preamp stopped working in mid january i,e mid winter and it is on a mast 15 ft on my roof there was no way for me to go up the roof because of ice and cold weather.the next few days there was a lull and I was able to get up and removes the preamp and reconnect the cable to my 8 bay antenna. I opened the amp and carefully examined the small board with a bright light and noticed a small coil with one side unsoldered . I've use my soldering iron and resoldered the coil back . Now I was thinking of the hassle of going back up the house in case the unit wont work so I tried it at the entrance of the cable in the basement which is like 25 ft away and guess what it work and it work beautifully . I did a rescan and all 32 channels were coming in HD clear and beautiful ( NBC at 170 km away was in full HD , I live north of Toronto) So this is where the unit is going to be no need to have it close to the antenna. Thanks Channel Master.

I’ve experimented with cord cutting on and off, depending on what my cable company offers. Their latest deal is not great, so I put the antenna back up in a better spot and now get 40 channels 98% reliably on a Clearstream antenna I bought in 2011. We are located in a high spot on the east side of the Greater Toronto area, which means you can basically point your antenna due south to catch the CN Tower / Buffalo and get all the Canadian stations, plus the major US networks for free (something the cable company wanted me to now pay extra for). I don’t know if I really need this product. I did a channel scan before and after connecting it, and the channels were the same. I did split the signal on two TVs and over several dozen feet of cable, so it probably helped power through a split signal. If you need that only, you could probably skip this pre amp and just get a powered splitter for cheaper. On a side note, It still doesn’t give me NBC consistently, which seems to drop off once every few weeks (along with 49-3 only…weird). Conclusion: if you already have a higher gain, long distance directional antenna like the Clearstream, this probably won’t get you more channels, but will help get them more consistently. A strong antenna matters more than the pre amp.

Being located at Montreal's south-shore between Montreal, Burlington and Plattsburgh's towers, this amp provides the stability of 29 channels. Pointing my antenna down south, I was getting 27 channels prior but 10 of them were unstable, showing pixilation or blacking out on occasion. All of them are nice and clear now with the exception of 2 of them that are on and off when on occasion when whether is bad. The quality of the signal is so clear on my 4K TV that I didn't even think twice of cutting tv service. Kids missed there specialty channels for a few days but I never heard anything about it since. Remember when you could flip over the channels in less than a minute to see what playing? If needed, the built-in guide from the TV provides show information as the info is encoded in the OTA signal but I find it more convenient to flip through and check out the guide If I want details. Definitely a must for densely populated areas. To get a bigger boost, get the other version of this AMP but it will oversaturate signals if they are already strong.

I recently installed a new TV antenna, I live in the windsor area and purchased this to help and bring in more channels and I really hoped it would bring in global TV 29.1 , it does really good in helping most channels come in clear but it don't help my 29.1 problem. I actually get 70 channels instead of 65 but I'm at that just this close situation of my 29.1 problem. But it does help make the channels clear and still don't regret buying it.