I bought this TV in Feb. 2009 and have had it for a few days now. Several people said that after being turned off and on it would not remember the channels previously found and had to rescan for all the channels every time it was turned on. Mine has always remembered the channels, even after being unplugged from the wall. I suspect that the reason some have that problem is that remembering requires the internal battery to function correctly. Installing the battery was somewhat of a problem. First the instructions did not state whether the battery should be installed so that the point where the wires enter the battery is on the left or the right as you install the battery. I assumed it must be on the left, which causes the wires to be routed across the top of the battery. Secondly, no matter which way you install it, the battery fits in very tightly. IMO, this could cause a failure of the wires over time as they are pressed against the case by the battery. Thirdly, there are no instructions on which way the connector from the wire is to be plugged into the jack inside the TV. I realized which way it goes because I am an electrical engineer and very familiar with such things. But I can see how someone who is not as familiar might not get the jack plugged in correctly. Fourthly, the jack is down inside the TV so it is a bit difficult to get the plug aligned to get it into the jack. So if someone is having trouble with it not remembering the channels, I suggest that they check to see if the battery is functioning properly. This can be done by just unplugging the TV and seeing if it runs on battery power. It should run for at least one to two hours on battery power. If it does not, that is probably the cause of the problems.
Now about the signal sensitivity. I am using the TV to replace a 20 year old 5 inch black and white TV in my kitchen. The old TV received the major channels 8, 10, and 39 basically okay with an attached monopole antenna similar to the one that comes with the Haier. However, the Haier received very snowy pictures in the same location with the analog version of those channels. And it would not receive the digital channels at all. I attached a better antenna (small log periodic antenna) but performance did not improve much. It received the digital channels somewhat but basically froze. With digital channels, when it is not receiving you do not get any audio so this was not satisfactory. I already had cable TV in my house but had never run a cable to the kitchen because we only used the TV there to catch the news while cooking. So since it seemed the Haier was going to need a larger antenna attached to receive the digital over the air channels, that setup would not be very portable. Because of that I ran a cable from my cable TV to the kitchen. With that I get beautiful reception on all analog channels. I was also getting good reception on the cable digital channels when I first tried it, but I had to install a splitter in running the new cable and the extra loss from the splitter apparently causes the digital versions of the channels to no longer work. I could solve that problem, but on cable TV the digital versions of the channels are just duplicates of the analog versions (if you are not using a cable conversion box), and on this small screen the analog versions of the channels look just as good as the digital versions, so I am not going to work on that problem.
BTW, to run the cable to the kitchen I bought a high quality 75 foot RG-6 quad shield cable from a guy on Ebay for $14 with shipping, whereas my local electronics store needed $44 for a 75 foot cable.
I have not tried the TV in my car, as I do not plan to use it that way, but my other testing makes me doubt it would work well in a car.Get more detail about Haier HLT71 7-Inch Handheld LCD TV.
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