there was a short in the first antenna I'd picked up. I discovered it when I bumped the table and the mini stopped receiving any channels. Wiggled the cord going into the antenna and it started working again.

While at the grocery store I spotted a flat antenna and picked it up. I attached it to the top of my camera tripod for testing.

It works fairly well and should be quite unobtrusive when I put it in place on top the shelving unit

I figured out that the channel list has checkboxes that you can uncheck so channels don't show up in you rotation (channel up/down will skip them).

It also removes those channels from the guide.

So I've been reviewing the channels and removing those that I'm not going to watch - most of those are Spanish and the Airbox channels, but others include infomercials, Chinese, Islamic, Vietnamese and numerous religious channels. I'm down to 20 channels that I'd watch and it has made looking at the schedule in the guide much nicer.