Product Description

two-piece design with separate amp module and power supply * high-gain, low-noise operation for deep fringe reception * compatible with both digital and analog TV signals * separate amplification for VHF (channels 2-13) and UHF (channels 14-69) * filtering for rejection of out-of-band signals *

Product Details

• Brand: Channel Master
• Model: 7777

Features

• two-piece design with separate amp module and power supply
• high-gain, low-noise operation for deep fringe reception
• compatible with both digital and analog TV signals
• separate amplification for VHF (channels 2-13) and UHF (channels 14-69)
• filtering for rejection of out-of-band signals

Customer Reviews

Good, but not the best, even some of the cheapies beat it
I live in North West NJ, which is a deep fringe area because it is blocked by hills.

I am a ham radio operator and have an 86 foot tower for ham radio use. My CM4228 is there, as is this CM7777 preamp.

Build quality of this preamp is good. The casing is made of metal unlike many of the others which are cheap and made of plastic.

Performance is good. It helps me overcome the cable loss of 210' of RG6 cable and helps pull in the weak signals from New York and Philadelphia.

I like that it has separate inputs for VHF/UHF.

But this pre-amp made me lose channel 25-1 (physical 24) and gave me dropouts on some other channels which were previously dropout free. No matter how I adjusted the antenna it did not pick up these lost channels. Previously I had an Antennacraft 10G212 which pulled in almost everything. The Antennacraft is also about half the price of the CM7777. I suspect it can't handle the overload from the nearby (~15mi) WMBC analog which contains zero programming that interests me. The good news is that WMBC is moving away come 02/17/09 so hopefully it will get a little better.

Channel Master used to be a great company that had some really great products, when they were owned by Andrew Corp. I have quite a few products from Andrew and their build quality is excellent. But CM had to be sold off when Commscope bought out Andrew, and last I heard CM closed their last US plant this year. So unfortunately I think the once great company Channel Master will be gone soon. The name will remain, but the products just won't be the same anymore.

Customer Support Problem
This is a solid product, BUT.... the manufacturer, Crutchfield, is very stingy with support unless you buy directly from Crutchfield. I emailed a modest question about installation and they replied:

"Product Support Advisors are reserved for Crutchfield Customers. Since you ordered the item from Amazon I am not sure if it came from us or not."

Really lame. But a great product and were it not for the attitude, I'd give it five stars.

Deep Fringe MUST-HAVE!
Using this together with a CM deep-fringe combination antenna, a DB-8 UHF-only antenna, and an old RadioShack combo antenna that just won't quit working. I'm combining the RadioShack and DB-8 with a channel combiner into the UHF input and the CM into the VHF input. Signal gained significantly. I'm on the other side of a 1000' hill which is between me and the transmitters at least 25 miles away, and am getting 18 channels (5 HD), not including the analog crap which I just can't watch anymore...