My latest review continues my series looking at the changing landscape for receiving linear television programming. This time we look at an antenna that will solve most of my OTA reception problems called the Televes DATBOSS LR Mix.
This is an enormous TV antenna designed for situations where you’re located far from broadcast towers or have challenging terrain like I do. It’s likely overkill for many people, but for me it is the first antenna that I tested that pulls in all of my major networks both over ATSC 1.0 and the new NextgenTV 3.0 standard.
Assembly wasn’t too difficult although the instructions reminded me a lot of Ikea’s sometimes cryptic assembly guides. Thankfully Televes has a helpful assembly video on their YouTube channel that will help those of us who are challenged assembling things like this.
The antenna includes a pre-amp for the best results. It is not outdoor rated but ideally you’ll place it somewhere near where the antenna is mounted on the exterior.
Performance is outstanding – most of my stations are located over 35 miles away with a lot of challenging terrain and lots of trees in the way. I found that it picked up my NextGenTV ATSC 3.0 stations better than an Antennas Direct unit I purchased previously with a separate preamp installed. It also picked up one ATSC 1.0 network that I could never receive and it was able to maintain about a 50% signal quality. In total I was able to reliably bring in about 55 channels to my place here – more than any other antenna I have tried.
Thanks to the Antenna Man for the recommendation! It’s big but if you’re having DTV reception problems this will likely solve your problem.