Anyone have a Livewave antenna?

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

I just came across this on the net. It supposedly uses no electricity but plugs in to an AC outlet. Purportedly, it turns the the entire wiring of a house or apartment into one gigantic antenna. In theory, it seems viable. But I was wondering if anyone has any user feedback from this?

https://www.getlivewaveantenna.com

 

[zephcom]

I just came across this on the net. It supposedly uses no electricity but plugs in to an AC outlet. Purportedly, it turns the the entire wiring of a house or apartment into one gigantic antenna. In theory, it seems viable. But I was wondering if anyone has any user feedback from this?

https://www.getlivewaveantenna.com

I suppose if you have the money to waste, you could try it. But there is a whole science on the construction of a television receive antenna. And I'm not aware of any of them that looks like the wiring in one's house.

Just having a longer wire doesn't help at all unless one wants to receive shortwave radio. Television signals don't need longer wire, they need elements tuned to their specific frequencies.

 

[Sophrosyne]

Antennas have to be tuned in length in order to effectively receive the signal frequencies. House wiring isn't tuned but rather way way too long for the VHF (Very High Frequency) and UHF (Ultra High Frequency) stations. IMO you could take a long piece of wire and stick it in the back of your set and probably do about as well as the overpriced device.
My advice is to invest in an antenna like this https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Mast...&qid=1550357100&sr=8-3&keywords=4+bay+antenna
Probably for about the same price. I built one of these out of coat hangers, house wire and a balun on a 1x4 board with some screws. I receive all of the stations within 35 miles of here but at times some have issues due to the direction and distance away from me.

Lots of people were duped into buying $20 antennas that are nothing but a few pieces of wire and plastic with a connector that you could probably just find a piece of throwaway cable tv cable and cut it open about 2 feet long and drape the two wires like a pair of rabbit ears and do just as well for free.

 

[Sophrosyne]

I suppose if you have the money to waste, you could try it. But there is a whole science on the construction of a television receive antenna. And I'm not aware of any of them that looks like the wiring in one's house.

Just having a longer wire doesn't help at all unless one wants to receive shortwave radio. Television signals don't need longer wire, they need elements tuned to their specific frequencies.

There is a group called the ARRL (Antenna Radio Relay League) that spends a ton of time designing and building antennas and has many publications going over how to make antennas for amateur radio.TV reception is just another radio wave so many antenna designs are identical. One other consideration is interference and also multipath signals as digital tv cannot distinguish which signal is correct in time and phase when either you have multiple antennas coming into a tv as house wiring would do and a wire in the front of the house would receive the same station as one in the back but delays not running direct plus phase of the signal as it could receive it bounced off a building could have a tv tuner confused. In other words it is possible that you would have serious issues with this type of antenna in a metropolitan city with stations in several directions reflecting off several buildings vs a single antenna system. It is best to have a single antenna system in one location phased correctly in one direction if not perfectly omnidirectional.
I often have issues with large vehicles blocking some of my signal like one time a neighbor got very ill and a fire truck and ambulance was out there and one channel was breaking up badly while there often is high winds that move trees and perhaps even sway tv towers here and there causing my picture to mess up too.
Helicopters are a mess around here as at times they interfere with the tv either blocking it partially or having a second signal bouncing off them (multipath) that confuses the tv receiver.

 

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

It's a scam. Shame on Yahoo for allowing it in their advertisements.

 

[Sophrosyne]

The internet is a full of snake oil slingers.

 

[HantsUK]

A load of nonsense! Sticking a metal clothes hanger into your TV antenna socket is likely to give better results - at least, it would be much closer to the dimensions needed to receive TV frequencies. And will be far safer - no risk of being electrocuted.

If there was any merit in this idea, it would have already been done. TVs already connect to the mains via a mains cable and plug. So, using this for the antenna would be very simple (and would be done within the TV). A similar idea is already used on some portable devices (including some mobile phones) where the headphone wires are also used as the VHF radio antenna.

This is either a complete con - there is no connection between the antenna and the mains. At least, this might be a safer. Or, the antenna connector is RF coupled somehow to the mains. I would be doubtful that this was designed following relevant safety standards, or has been tested.

Even if this did work (it won't), the cost should be closer to $1.

I did find a review LiveWave Antenna Reviews - Is It a Scam or Legit? written by someone who doesn't know anything about antenna, but who did realise that this product has no technical specs, and that there are cheaper alternatives. The review is followed by customer reviews, all of which are very negative.

 

[pgp_protector]

Pray that there's nothing wrong / can go wrong with the wiring, else you're dumping 120 into your device antenna.