For All Channels 269; Ultra Efficient Transfer Of Signal With ; Range Up To 40 Miles Winegard HD 8200U High Defintion Platinum VHF/UHF/FM Antenna (HD8200U) The best of the best. The HD8200U has some of the highest gain of any consumer grade antenna. Built to last, so if you just want to purchase an antenna once, this is the one you want. Includes weather proof cartridge house for download module with 75 Ohm coaxial connection.

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Rather Disappointed
This unit was purchased to replace a 20+ year old antenna that was somewhat corroded and had several bent or missing elements. The old antenna was pulling in all of the local Baltimore stations well, but reception of Washington DC area channels (particularly UHF) was spotty at best. After reading the overwhelmingly positive reviews here and elsewhere, I had high hopes that the HD-8200U would improve my reception substantially.

As others have noted, the instructions do leave a bit to be desired. With careful review and some common sense, though, assembly is not too difficult. In general, the antenna appears to be well constructed. I did encounter one manufacturing issue, however, when attempting to join the front and rear sections. A bolt hole that had been punched in the tube had not been done so cleanly. The result was a large “burr” on the inside of the tube that needed to be broken off and filed down before the parts could be put together.

After completing assembly and mounting the unit in the same orientation as the previous antenna, I hurried into the house – anxious to check out signal strengths and rescan for any additional channels. I was surprised to find that I had in fact lost several stations. The receiver was no longer detecting DC channels 4, 5, 20, and 66 at all. I spent considerable time adjusting the antenna rotor, but to no avail. Signal strengths for all of the local stations (both UHF and VHF) are quite good but about the same as with the old antenna.

I am not running a preamplifier, but I really expected this unit to perform at least as well as my previous weather-worn, beat up antenna without one. This has been a waste of both time and money for me.

5 Stars GREAT Reception!
For years we had an RCA VHF/UHF antenna mounted to our chimney, but it came down Easter weekend of 2009 from a tornado. Since several of the Nashville stations had already began broadcasting digitally, we were really enjoying digital TV. For a replacement I decided to try a DB8 from Antennas Direct, but it failed to live up to its reviews (don’t get me started). It was only UHF and upper VHF and none of the stations were all that strong.

Well… it’s a new day and a new antenna. Got the HD8200U from Amazon and it really sucks! That’s a good thing! It sucks in every broadcast station in middle Tennessee. It’s pulling in over 10 different stations, most of which are broadcasting with subchannels. I now have 23 different channels/sub-channels to choose.

Part of what makes this antenna work so well is its size. This is a BIG antenna. It’s 14′ long and over 9′ at the widest. But, it was amazingly easy to assemble and install. It is very light weight and well balanced. I installed it myself – took about hour to assemble it and then another hour or so to get it installed. Do not even think about installing it with anything stronger than a breeze. It accepts a 2″ pole, but I just used a 1-1/4″ top pole from a chain-link fence. Worked great. Oh, this is without any amplifier and it’s split to three TVs. Most stations are pegged around 98% signal strength with a couple around 85%

Now that I’ve gushed over how great it is, let me say a few things that really ticked me off. They’re minor, but very annoying. 1) Ordered the antenna and one of the vanes was installed backwards at the factory. It was riveted on so I couldn’t correct it. Because of this, it wouldn’t lock in to place. Returned it to Amazon and had them ship another. 2) Second antenna was OK, but there were some nuts and bolts missing. Had to make a trip to Home Depot to get what was missing.

At any rate, I’m very pleased with the reception and how easily the installation went. Except for the two problems, it’s about as perfect as can be. While this isn’t a cheap antenna, it’s a whole lot cheaper than paying for cable or satalite each month!

2 Stars Big Disappointment
I used the Winegard web site for their recommendations and followed it by the letter. Antenna must be assembled on the ground. Impossible to do on the roof. It is big and bulky so have at least another person to help you get it to the mounting position. The signal strength is worse than the 20 year old antenna I had in the attic which was 1/2 the size. I get fewer stations with the new Winegard than I got prevoius old antenna. The new antenna is outside and 20 ft higher than the old and pointing in the same direction. Big expense, poor results. May work fine if you are in a strong signal area but I bought it to improve recepption as I am out 50-60 miles.

3 Stars Muy buena antena
tiene muy buena calidad de imagen pero lo unico malo es que es unidireccional y tienes que estar moviendola para que agarre otros canales y si compras un preamplificador no hace ninguna diferencia aun tienes que seguir cambiando la direccion

5 Stars It’s in the attic
I live 30 miles from Chicago.

Before purchasing this antenna I read all the reviews. Most of the concerns that people seemed to have had nothing to do with the antenna, but actually centered around the flimsy cardboard box it was shipped in. When our antenna arrived the box was loose at both ends and there were a few nuts rolling free in the box that could have very easily fallen out. But we lucked out and everything was there.

By the way – we utilized the super free shipping that Amazon offers. The antenna arrived a couple of days after we ordered it.

We put the antenna in the attic of our two story home. Our home is surrounded by larger houses and lots of very tall trees. We get all our normal channels, plus a few I never knew existed. I was concerned that, with such a powerful antenna, we might pick up too many channels and they would spill over on each other, but since this antenna is very directional, that has not happened.

I am very pleased with this antenna. It feels like I’ve purchased a lifetime of free reception for the mere cost of about three months of cable TV.

By the way, be careful when exiting your attic. My ladder slipped and I fell out of the attic. But don’t worry! I’m okay….just pulled a muscle in my arm while trying to break the fall.

Buy/More Info

The Asus HDP-R1 O!Play Digital Media Player offers stunning 1080p high definition visuals with the high speed file transfer of eSATA and LAN. Just play and share your music with one click and experience a hassle-free multimedia playback with no need for file conversions!

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars New firmware 1.11N is now available
I have this device for about 3 days. I noticed it failed to re-scan the attached USB harddrive after the machine is on for a while. As a result, you can see the drive but you won’t able to see the folders and files unless you recycle the power of the O!play to force a rescan again. It is annoying and I was about to return it. Last night, I went to ASUS website and found out they now have the 1.11N firmware for NTSC TV system. I downloaded and installed it and viola, the issue has been resolved. The new firmware also has some new features that is nice as well, such as sort by file date. You can also bring up the recent view files as a quick short-cut. I heard ASUS are also working on getting YouTube as well on the next upgrade. Hopefully more good things will come. For the price I paid for this, it worth every penny and more. It play every media files I throw at it and the picture is amazing. If you want to watch AVCHD files like those recorded on HD camorder, make sure you use the eSATA connection to your harddrive, the USB connection is not fast enough and the video can be choppy.

On the side note, you cannot download the firmware from the ASUS website like any other download. They force you to install their own download software first before you can download any files from them. I hate to install another piece of crap software on my computer.

4 Stars WD TV and ASUS O!play..
There are a few differences between the ASUS O!play and the WD TV player which set the benchmark for HD players.

First you Have to download and install the 1.11 firmware version, it will solve alot of issues like HDMI compatibility and the subtitle options, plus it will add the UPNP server option.

The O!play has network capability which the WD hasn’t.(they are both priced at $99)

The O!play supports more formats than the WD does.

With the O!play audio is played through the HDMI so you dont need additional audio cables like the WD TV does, you can choose 2 channel or RAW that plays the audio the way it was created, plus with the WD you need the fiber optics cable for some audio tracks, the O!play played them all.

The remote is much more responsive than the WD.

The O!play doesn’t have the picture preview of the files like the WD, instead it plays a preview of the file.(this option can be disabled).

Subtitle codes are the same as the WD but it has 6 colors to choose from instead of two and the size range is much larger.

Resume play is perfect with the O!play whereas the WD sometimes it doesn’t work.

Even after the firmware update the O!play still has HDMI compatibility issues, basically you CAN’T choose the 1080p option with some TVs,(Doesn’t work on a PHILIPS LCD but works perfectly with a SAMSUNG PLASMA!),Check out the ASUS forums, the WD worked on all the TVs I plugged it to.

The O!play is ALMOST double the size of the WD (check the picture I posted), it’s remote is too.

The O!play has one USB and an esata/USB port whereas the WD has two USB ports.

When using an external hard drive it turns off when you turn the O!play off, with the WD it doesn’t.

The O!play stays clean and doesn’t attract fingerprints or scratches, the WD .. OMG!

For 720p and 1080p files both played the files perfectly.

Conclusion..

I really can’t decide which one is better, they both have thier pros and cons, my guess is that it will be decided with upcoming firmware updates.

2 Stars Not quite there and Windows 7 Users beware for now
I purchased this unit in part due to the excellent reviews on Amazon. I should have checked the ASUS Forum first.

Windows 7 users have all kinds of trouble with shared drives and files. I finally got it working with Windows 7 by doing a Registry Edit provided on the ASUS forum. Not quite plug and go, right?

The documentation states it plays most all file formats, however it will not play many of my WMV high quality files (these play fine on a PC and windows media center so it is not the file)

ASUS Support on this device is non existent… check the forum and there are cries for help everywhere.

User Interface has a long was to go as well.. functional but not great.

Perhaps with future firmware updates it will improve over time, but for now be advised.

4 Stars Plays everything thrown at it, connecting to network shares still seems lacking.
A few things. I am giving this thing a 4 out of 5. It seems to play everything I throw at it. A previous reviewer on October 21 mentions that “The slightly annoying thing is that as you scroll through a list of movie files it tries to instantly play a preview.” You can easily disable this by going to the setup panel of the O!play.

[...]: [...] Make sure you download the appropriate firmware for your region. NTSC or PAL. I recommend opening this in Internet Explorer because when I used firefox; the download would never start correctly.

With this firmware I have successfully connected to and streamed MANY different formats via PS3 media server. (a UPNP server) I’m not sure why you would want to do this when connecting to a simple file share seems to be the stated goal of this player, but I digress, it’s a feature that some seem to want.

Now, I have had nothing but trouble connecting to file server shares. This includes both a Windows 7 box and an Ubuntu Linux box with Samba. I have tried everything and the shares won’t even show up in the list under Network. All machines are in the same broadcast domain, and I am able to connect to both servers with ANY other client. So with that being said i’ve been relegated to manually mounting the shares so they show up as LOCAL DISK(s). Yes you read that correctly. So now when I go to play files I go to the Storage Device option appropriate category and my server(s) shares are listed as locally connected disks.

Here’s how you do that:

telnet 10.1.1.243 (ip address of your asusO!play)

username: root

password: (<--nothing)

you need to edit the run_tail file

vi /usr/local/etc/dvdplayer/script/run_tail

vi isn’t an easy text editor google “vi cheat sheet”

(*in the below listed example 10.1.1.31 and HDmovies are variables that can be ANYTHING, they are your choice and must be set based on your own home network*)

add something like the following:

mkdir -p /tmp/ramfs/volumes/HDmovies

mount -t cifs -o username=yourusername,password=yourpassword //10.1.1.31/HDmovies /tmp/ramfs/volumes/HDmovies

now reboot your player and browse to Storage Device under the appropriate category and you’ll see your network share(s) mounted.

3 Stars great idea, still some issues
I bought this box based on many positive reviews here. My experiences differ a little though.

Yes this unit plays pretty much anything. That’s a big plus. The interface and setup is also very simple and easy. You really don’t need a manual for it. The image quality is great, both SD and HD movies look excellent.

I have a collection of 400+ movies on my server, in various formats. The O!Play plays them all. The slightly annoying thing is that as you scroll through a list of movie files it tries to instantly play a preview. This causes a slight delay in which it doesn’t accept any input from the remote. This makes it a little hard to quickly go through a list of movies.

The bigger issue I found was that it stops to play back in the middle of a movie. It happened on every movie I tried it on so far, so it’s not a random issue. Pressing Stop & Play again will restart the movie just fine, so I really don’t know where the issue is. Unfortunately it doesn’t continue where it stopped

The very same server on the very same network cable plays any movie fine and without interruption on my PS3. On the PS3 there is also no delay browsing through a list and the PS3 starts playback quicker than the O!Play. This indicates that all these issues are not with the server.

Another thing I want to mention is that the O!Play does not see media servers.

Bottom line: very impressive that it plays pretty much anything and the quality is great and I love the simple use and setup. But the issues of stopped playback are very annoying and make it almost useless. I haven’t given up yet. Maybe a new firmware will help. Using a local HD is not an option, that defeats the concept of having a central media server.

Buy/More Info