"There are thousands of feet of electrical wiring built in your house or apartment building. And what is an antenna? Just a long wire! You already have the greatest antenna ever made built into your house!" RF guy enters the room, punches 'friend', leaves.

This product IS NO SCAM! it does exactly what its supposed to do! It milks the stupid and makes the providers rich quick. Its amazing! ;)

Now let's talk about the ultimate scam for your brain ever: TV itself.

Just waiting for someone to send Dave one of these on mailbag

Those listed channels ARE our free OTA channels ;)

USA also has free to air as well, that is what they keep referencing.

I knew someone who told me he hooked up a CRT television antenna to the mains earth and got better reception than the antenna that was attached to it but one day they had thunder and lightning, and had some surges and he said his television got fried.

Their whole "never pay for cable again" assumes that the only cable channels you watch are also broadcast over-the-air

It works *great*! You just have to lift your houses ground connections. It even means you get healing tingles from all your electronics.

If I was the scammer, I would have included Netflix in the channel list, just for shitz and gigglz.

This shady antenna idea has been pushed since the 1920s.... first for radio, then analog television in the 1950s. These guys are late to the game!

I bet his wife's *really* pleased that the cable guy isn't coming around anymore. Did he think that maybe his wife is ensuring the cable goes out with regularity?

I guess the conveniently supplied *FREE* CABLE has no shielding and is the entire antenna

I liked the DMCA protected logo at the bottom. I sent them a tweet :-p

It still shows 51 minutes ago XD

Considering this mind-boggling # of things connected to earth in a house this is like attaching your antenna to a junkyard.

In the US, OTA (over the air) channels are also broadcast on cable. A lot of people get the OTA broadcasts on cable TV, as well as sports, movie, history, science... Some people don’t know they could just use an antennae to get the local TV channels. In the US, there are no “council” fees to just watch TV. You don’t have to be up on your taxes.

In the UK, there was a time when classified ads would offer a product called the "de-activator". Purchasing it would stop you having to pay the BBC licence fee. When you got the "device" is was a badly photocopied sheet of paper giving you the telephone number of the BBC and the instruction to say you don't have a tv.

Also - This is nothing more than an adapter that uses the AC mains as an antenna. It capacitivly connects the mains to the antenna input of your TV via a short length of coax. It's a goofy cheap technique that's been around forever in the world of radio/tv reception. And of course, the performance at VHF/UHF is horrible because of the frequency/wavelengths involved.

yup 51 minutes ago still

A guy I roomed with who was an engineer at Northrop Grumman no less fell for something similar to this and bought one for each of his family members. I remember when I got home one day, he was so angry he got scammed by it, he took a shotgun and destroyed each one in the backyard.

ive noticed a huge surge in antenna adverts lately..mainly directed to those in the US...theyve had FTA TV all along...but everyone "thinks" they have to pay for cable to get TV...lots of them useless little HD patch antennas going for stupid prices..

Just come to Germany pay for tv or go to jail. Got no TV? Doesn't matter pay or go in prison

It would only pick up closeby free OTA (over the air) channels that can be picked up by any rabbit ear type antenna. FTA is usually picked up by Satellite receivers

"Our testical clamp really works, just look at all these testimonials."

OMG... I can't believe you are that confused about _"never pay for cable again"._ Would you be this confused about _"never pay for gas again"_ on a electric car advertisement? LOL.

Here's how broadcast TV works in the US and how/why this scam works... In February 2009 we were all mandated to switch our stations from analog to digital. In the case of the station I worked at, that was merely a case of switching the mode of the exciter because we got to keep our broadcast frequency. A lot of stations didn't. Anyway, those stations that they list on the page that you get for free were mostly already broadcasting at least in the case of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Etc... Once the digital switch happened, under the bandwidth stations were now given on the digital spectrum, stations could opt to split that bandwidth into multiple sub-stations like a lot of those other networks further down on that list. The upshot was that a lot of stations gained new channels that they could license out and get revenue from by including them in their stream. Most stations went with 720P on the main channel and gave an additional 3 SD sub-channels. Areas that previously had 10 stations suddenly have almost 40 channels. The downside was that analog TVs were useless now without a converter box, and people mostly didn't notice here because they were already paying for cable service which conveniently packaged all those local stations into their stream. You only noticed if you didn't have cable or you lived where it wasn't available. Anyway, a lot of people were just totally unaware that all the old broadcast stations now broadcast digitally. And in fact there are many stations available for free so long as you have an antenna with decent gain, and perhaps one that is optimized for the ATSC signal that is the new standard. These things are just antennas, although how well your household wiring could serve in that capacity is pretty dubious to say the least. But there are lots of these, and what they're doing to avoid being prosecuted for fraud is telling more or less the truth. There is free digital broadcast TV in the US. All you need is an antenna. Why they feel the need so sell a sucky antenna when a good one would actually work is a bit of a mystery.

If you live in a wooden house and the local laws don't require a AC wiring to be in metal tubes maybe you have a chance to have some resonance in the VHF spectrum . In some places you can use PBC coated wiring . If you live in a masonry or concrete home this is useless since all the electrical wiring has to be inside metal tubing mostly .Also you have the risk of lightning strikes and high voltage and current spikes. Good thing you denounce this scams ! :)

"Magic woo woo energy" , LMAO

There are people in the US who have no idea that free to air even exists. The cable, mobile phone, and satellite companies long ago disabused people of the notion that RF exists in a way that is free to use.

Dave I have one real question about antennas did you ever made a video which explains the different antenna types (plain wire, dish, fractal) and when to use them? Form an engineer point of view?

This has been around since the '50s. Popular science, popular electronics, comic books (probably next to Honor House x-ray glasses etc. Ones I knew of had a capacitor coupled twin lead to ac. Hopefully rated not to short. Related was a hunk of 300 ohm cable terminating in a plastic dingus usually with some twirly things sticking out. Usually just a length of 300 ohm twin lead. Of course a wet string might pick up something in the right circumstances. That's all you need for "proof".

Ok over here in the US there are two ways to get TV. One is technically free as it is ad supported. Unlike in the uk where you have to pay a license fee to view tv broadcasts period. 1. Antenna (Free Over the Air) - The antennas we have here pick up local network stations free. The local stations (Nbc, ABC, Fox Cbs and a few others) normally normally broadcast between 50-75 miles from the station. You normally buy the antenna for a one time fee and that's it, the broadcast its self is free because all content is sponsored by advertisers. 2. Cable TV/Satalight - These are the "premium" paid channels like CNN, Specialty spots channels, HBO, Nickelodeon Disney channel. There are generally 100's of them and come in packages that you can sign up for from a provider like Comcast or ATT. These premium channels you always have to pay for and are never offered for free any where in the US. The bills for such services can and most timers do surpass $150 a month. In the beginning (late 70's early 80's) people paid for cable because they didn't have to watch commercials and had more options and didn't have to deal with reception issues cause by using antennas. Now paid cable tv suffers from both the bloat of advertisements and reception issues due to aging equipment. So the scam here is saying that they can get "cable tv channels" for free. Or all "Cable channels" free. I see on this one they are careful not to put the logos of the actual cable channels on the ad. They could get sued for false advertisement. Also if they did find a way to get their device to access paid content for free , that would be illegal. Technically, since you also get the local stations when you sign up for a premium cable you could (if you really stretched the definition) say you were getting cable station for free. Since for a few decades now in the US using antennas as fallen out of popularity (many opted to pay to get more channels with "better" content) many might not know what is available to them. However this device will not give you any thing much different then what you could get with an antenna you picked up at the local walmart.

Plug it into an extension cord for a few extra feet of FREE CABLE!

I hooked my stereo antenna port to my chain linked fence once. I was barely picking up (lots of static) stations from a couple of states away. I didn’t do it for long as I was concerned about lightning.

Scammers sold these devices when I was a kid in the '60s and '70s. Just a couple of capacitors to allow RF through connected to the house wiring. I also remember "color TV antennas", had a replay when everyone started selling "digital TV antennas". Hilarious.

I bet this thing does work. I used a metal stick in the air to get broadcast television for years. It sure won't replace cable or dish because you only get local channels, and some national networks. Or, you know, just pay for the streaming services you want and watch what you want whenever you want.

Thank you for sharing such details. I hate dealing with so many scam deals on internet offers.

I fix tvs in the US and it's funny how many people think there's no free to air anymore. They all complain about cable prices. I pull out a UHF antenna, or a piece of wire, and show them usually 20 free channels. It is about a car payment because we all get internet from the cable company. They try to bundle tv and wired phones, sometimes cell phones too.

What maybe the funniest tidbit is that only the ground pin on the "Yankee Doodle 'Merican" plug is actually metal. However, many homes built before the 70s (like the one I live in) only have two-wire outlets, without a ground pin. I have to purchase 3-to-2 pin adapters to plug 3 pin plugs into my home's sockets. I wonder how many of the dupes who buy this thing do the same thing?

This is too funny. In urban areas in the US, there are digital broadcasters, but the whole point of cable was to provide a wide array of content beyond just broadcast stations. (I happen to work for one of the first cable companies in the US)

It actually might work somehow. I used to listen to short wave radio in the past and I only had very good reciption when putting the magnetic loop antenna near the inhouse cabling. But I'm sceptical this will work in the hunderts Mhz range. Somewhen my neightbour decided to use powerlan and the short wave time was over for me.

Sadly there are many people nowadays that don't understand the difference between on air broadcast and cable. This product is for them. That is why its shaped like a Death Star radar dish, designed for childlike minds. I use a Leaf Antenna for broadcast in US. It requires a bit of fiddling to get the right position, but it probably works a lot better than random shaped wire in the house that has AC running in it. My understanding is that the shape and location of the antenna is more important than the size for picking up a clear signal. ( correct me if I'm wrong)

I bought a dollar store rabbit ear Antenna that worked better than two other 30$+ Antennas that had "amplification". Complete joke.

In the US you get a set top box for your Internet, TV and phone. Pretty much every household has one, as you would need at least one of those 3. Of course cable companies hook you up with more services for more $. That's why so many don't know there is such thing as OTA. Also, all mains wiring in the US run in conduit, which is a grounded metal pipe. No wires are ever exposed by code, therefore if they have a capacitor-to-ground in this device, the conduit will be the antenna, not the ground wires.

I remember my younger self bodging together lots of wires to make a long antenna and I was wondering why I didn't get any channels. My brain was unable to understand how a short length of wire worked better. I don't even know why I wanted TV? My TV was mostly used as a monitor, connected to an XP machine (that actually handled 1080p output with it's integrated GPU) and I was already watching KZfaq videos and getting inspirations on making TV antennas.

As an antenna professional, these things are just painful. And unchanged for decades. Sigh.

Those things have been around for years. Technically speaking it is what Yanks would call a "Line Cord Antenna". I just connects to the house's wiring through capacitors. Back in the day small FM radios would use the power line for an antenna (maybe they still do). Years ago I saw an magazine ad for one of them. It said: "Turn your house into a giant TV antenna!". Then, believe it or not there was a picture of a 70 meter parabolic antenna (one that you would find in Canberra--or here in the U.S. at Goldstone). The price is what is ridiculous. There would be about 50 cents worth of circuitry in the device (or less).

But there'll be soooo much QRM on the house wiring😂

"Millenials learn they can watch hundreds of shows through this crazy technology called a "TV antenna"" Is the article supposed to be satire?

I'd love to know what's inside, if it actually has something in there or basically just a few connections to the electrical grid.

If the device is using the wiring of the house as the antenna it doesn't matter where the device is installed as it doesn't have to point at anything. That "Other HD antennas" picture is bogus as you wouldn't have that effect on a digital channel. In Canada there are still many (digital only) channels available over the air. How many you can get depends on where you live. If you are in or near a big city there could be a half dozen or more. Probably fewer if you live out in the sticks somewhere. Always fun watching your debunk videos for these types of junk devices.

They have been out since the '60s. Yes, there were capacitors involved.

We get bombarded with ads for a device here in the UK headlined 'hundreds of Brits are cancelling their cable contracts..." It is an antenna allegedly designed by a NASA engineer (yeah right!!) with some of the same claims. It says that what the authorities don't want you to know is that there is some law or other that says that broadcasters have to transmit expensive pay-for cable TV channels over the air for free as well. But normal antennas can't receive these, presumably because of some big conspiracy. It is certainly not the case; we have Freeview UHF which is the regular Free To Air stuff, Sky satellite which is mostly subscription and Virgin cable in some areas. But no subscription channels are legally available for free!

For most city dwellers (hopping apartments, condos and whatnot) an indoor yagi is best. My tiny one is about a square foot and picks up 36 channels. Some young people think that cable is the only way to get HD, but I don't think they think antennas are illegal. I have run into one who thought you needed a journeyman to paint your apartment, or it's illegal - LOL!

Since this plug only makes your house to an "gigantic super antenna" you would still need an DVB-T / DVB-T2 Receiver (if the TV doesn't have it build-in) 🤔

It's all fun and games until a lightning strikes ground and your TV dies lol. I'm also waiting for someone to send you one of these scam devices for the mailbag.

To be fair some of these devices "kinda" work. They are just essentially a capacitive link to the mains wiring and a balun for the 75 ohm coax. I used to have something like these available for customers when I owned a TVRO satellite dish company in the late 80's. This allowed some users who wanted a dish to also get the local channels without having to put up an additional antenna. The ones I sold had a dip switch to change the capacitance load so you could tune the response for better reception. Like I said they worked...sort-of. Most of the time you could set the dip switches to get a good signal on a couple of the stations but the others would have terrible ghosts and multipath reflection images. The bottom line is that house wiring going every which way isn't the same as a long wire antenna, not to mention it's random length isn't tuned to the station frequencies. Most of the signals just cancel out or get reflected from other metal objects like ductwork etc. In the US our stations are all converted to digital broadcast now and usually have multiple stations per network channel. The ones this website describe like Cozi and H&I are just the common ride-along stations that are broadcast from our over-the-air networks. No purely "cable" stations just regular ad-supported broadcasts. So while I know these devices can work and can be better than a rabbit ear antenna especially in an apartment where you can't put up a real TV antenna, just know that YMMV!

I assume that Americans thinks that they *have to* pay of cable TV, even there are these FTA channels.

This product is working: some grundig kitchen radios used a AC coupled antenna; it was a nice feature before they install ferrit coil antenna into the radios They should install this in every TV as it takes only some cents for parts. (y-caps, directional coupler, ...) ; ok they should spare SSTV and D-ATV-TV's as they allways use a propper antenna. With a big matchbox you may connect every wire for reception and transmitting. ATT's are the automatic version.

known fact that some plugs are wired backwards sometimes so if you plug it into a outlet that has switched wires by accident will the tv explode when you send 110 volts into the cable plug of the tv ?

I added my tinfoil hat and I could hear the russians on the moon.

As Tom Waits said, "the large print giveth, the small print taketh away"

Those "antennas" are nothing new. I can remember them being advertised to "improve your TV reception" in American comic books and a few magazines since at least the sixties. Same old scam for a different generation of "clientele".

I once used copper tape and made a big antenna on my bedroom wall, my dad wasn't happy that tape is expensive.

people in the US often refer to basically any paid TV channels as "cable". you dont hear the term free-to-air much, and i think its true that not everyone knows you can get free channels with an antenna, since everyone is so used to paying an arm and a leg for their TV.

Every channel listed on the page is available OTA here in the Denver Metro area. I get 76 channels this way using a $10 HD antenna. I also have cable, and all of the same channels are available via cable. The other 300 channels I get over cable couldn't be picked up by this thing since the cable TV stations are 1) broadcast over a shielded cable and fiber optic, and 2) they are decoded by the set top box.

What explains how it receives "cable"-TV-signals are explained from a similar scam product page: "Developed by a NASA engineer using military technology, the Octa Air Antenna uses a discrete mud flap modern design which makes it the most reliable and technologically advanced antenna to hit the market today. But there is a main differnce - it allows you to watch almost every channel, movie or show for free. With no subscriptions and completely legal. […] But how can you watch for free? The secret to that is a law that no cable company in the world wants you to know about. It states that every cable company has to provide additionally to the normal signal a over-the-air signal. So in order to not break the law the cable companies distrubute this signal but in a low frequency- so almost no antennas were able to pick it up reliably. Until now - Octa Air changes that."

Go on Dave, buy it, you know you want to. It would be interesting to see what is inside it though

That list of stations are all free over the air HD. Where I am, I can get like 200ish stations, though only around 30 are in English. The standard scam with these TV antennas is to confuse the buyer to think free to air is some type of magic cable service. The idea is to target people who only ever had paid cable TV and either don't know or forgot able free over the air TV.

Honestly, hats off to whomever wrote this. It's hilarious!

Hi Dave. Those are called broadcast channels in the USA...sounds the same as your free to air. They are all the stations you could get with the old analog antenna system too.

CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS and a few other channel are free channels in the US.

This thing in the form of a "light socket radio antenna" has been around since the 1920s. It's fun to find those adverts in old magazines. At least then we didn't have to deal with all those buzzey cell-phone chargers!

The Cable deal is, that many people don't know about that there's free to air broadcast. There was even some new article, even in hungary, that young american people just discovered this newfangled method to receive TV. They always used cable tv, never ever head of this kind of thing, and now here comes the thing, they whole life is a lie, etc :D No wonder some tought it was illegal, imagine that you pay some good $$ for cable tv every month as long as you lived, or you can't watch it, and now some guy just show you a weird thing that does it for free. Like free electricity, free gas, etc, and you wanna make sure that it's not coming from wires before the meter, or magnetizing old meters :D Heck, even at hungary sometimes I had trouble explaining free-to-air broadcast before there was a more than a year long advertisement campagin before we switched to DVB-T2 from analog. Cable TV people have been grown up with it, and never head about anything else.

First class joy of skepticism Dave, your enthusiasm exposing this steaming pile of dung is top notch. You know the BS patterns well my son, and holy hell, they stuffed nearly every cliched crapstory into it. It's incredible that there are babes in wood that still fall for this sort of shite. Education is supposed to be the answer but for that you need people that value it in the first place, sadly. Where there are sheep you always get wolves.

Based on the picture the live and neutral pins are plastic, so it most definitely has to be a cap to the ground pin

Well, in my town, a sort-of super antennas did exist back in early and mid 2000s. If you installed a special antenna (it was some kind of outdoor antenna with an amplifier) on your roof, you could watch some cable TV channels. This was most likely a courtesy of some pirate broadcaster. I've watched these broadcasts for many years, right until IIRC 2008 when I've switched to IPTV.

I found the longest wires in my building. Brb, hooking up my super-antenna to the submains in the electrical riser.

And sometimes the house wiring can work for longer wave AM, but I doubt its that great for higher frequencies, and you have to isolate the receiver from all the garbage that's on mains wiring.

Dave, the stations listed are not 'cable' stations, but rather generic over-the-air stations that the FCC required to be available. Looks like this is just a 'good-looking' generic digital antenna.

I'm not sure if I'd call this a scam. It's basically a free-to-air DTV antenna. In many areas you can get a few channels just by jamming a paperclip into the TV antenna socket. It probably works, even if the story is nonsense.

it only works if your home is wired properly . it runs of the ground running through the house.. most houses are not properly grounded . the electric prongs do not connect to anything. just the ground.

Wait wait wait what if those patterns are in fact pcb traces. Picking up the waves in 1/4th of the wavelenght. And nothing is connected to the electic wires anyway. Just the pins for keeping the mini dish vertically on the wall?

The idea of using you houses electrical wiring as an antenna is not a new idea. They make these devices clear back in the 60's. Back when I was a little kid. My grand parents use a similar device on their 1960 RCA color TV and it work quite well. I will say that these devices are better then rabbit ears, but not as good as an outdoor roof antenna. Oh! and if you gotta ask? Yes, all it is, is just a matching transformer connected to the mains by a couple of 500pf Caps.

Dave: Broadcast TV Channels, on sub-channels, broadcast some "cable" channels here in the US, like "Me", on some sub-digital channels to use up their bandwidth allowance. You won't get channels like National Geographic or History. I have little experience with digital OTA TV as we are about 60 miles from the closest TV transmistter with a mountain, or two, in the way. Devices like this probably work okay in the big cities, as a piece of wire would hanging out of the back of TV.

I have used cable TV a total of two years out of the last fifty. Currently use an antenna made from four coat hangers and pick up about 100 channels with Internet for movies. I do have a proper fringe antenna in the attic on a rotor.

Most of those are free or ad-supported OTA TV networks in the US. BET and The Weather Channel are basic cable channels, but might be broadcast OTA in some places, or might be there as a come on. These things aren't new. I've seen antenna devices from the '60s (perhaps older) that accepted a 300Ω antenna lead (what old TV sets used) and had a non-polarized 2-prong plug typical of devices sold before 1980. I found it in a friend's house in the '70s and asked if I could keep it when he was going to throw it out. It had nothing but a small capacitor between one of the antenna leads and one of the power leads. Because it was non-polarized, it could have been connected to hot or neutral. It worked better placed on a high shelf. A right-leaning relative who watches Rupert Murdoch''s "news" channel here in the US got scammed by a similar thing that sold a cheap bowtie antenna on a flexi-PCB that at least worked, but failed to replace his satellite receiver and the basic cable channels like Fox "News." MOF because of the frequency repack, the tiny UHF-only antenna couldn't pick up a lot of the stations that had to move to the less desirable VHF frequencies.

Sadly, in about 3-4 years, finely tuned negative index of reflection materials will have made it too industry instead of just the lab bench and we can expect to see massive gains on antenna performance for any microwave communications tech. Too bad these yip yips have just rediscovered transmatches which give you good "signal" but increase the noise something insane.

I got a piece of wire ran across in my attic and I get most all those channels there. I have put up a high antenna but all I got was repeat networks in a different city. Same shows. Not much use unless you wanna see the news from a different city.

The channels shown are all on free to air. The top row are your main networks, things like cozy, antenna, qubo, ion. Are smaller networks that rent the sub channels like 30-3, 30-4 where 30-1, 30-2 would be NBC here. Weather and bet are cable only i think.

so in sort connect your cable antenna to ground wiring but do at with your own risk if thunder season come

I think by law, cable tv stations need to broadcast free to air as well in the USA.. but most USA people use cable instead of free to air.

If the TV has an earth connector on its mains plug then what you have is a loop antenna, TV cable and mains, with a long wire attached to it, earth lead in building. The long wire is attached to every noisy bit of electrical equipment in the area. If your TV doesn't have an earth pin then what you have is a random long wire antenna which is connected to all the same electrically noisy things around you, perhaps for miles. The phase of all the signals is unknown so don't expect good performance on any particular channel but you might be lucky and get a few good ones. There are situations that can occur with faulty wiring etc. that could result in a risk of electrocution if their capacitor fails. So I hope they didn't get cheap with the cap. What's the chances? Then again there may not even be a cap in there, it's not actually required and is only there to improve user safety. Just hang a coat hanger of the antenna socket, a lot safer. ;)

When rectum oops Spectrum took over Time Warner here they encrypted the locals we used to get with basic cable that any HDTV could get. So we dropped that and Switched my single Mythtv HDhomerun tuner to 4 tuners in the attic with antennas. ABC,NBC,CBS,fox,pbs all perfect with many subchannels. All transferrable to dvd or memory stick. Netflix and Amazon prime fill in, but of course losing the Cable Cash cow, they will bring up the internet costs up asap. Off air and library DVDs would be good for those on an intelligent budget.

They don't say you're going to be getting "Cable" TV channels, they just say you don't have to "pay for cable". The wording does not come out and tell you that you will NOT be getting cable channels as this product only allows you to get "over the air" free channels, which anyone can do with a TV digital receiver and an antenna in the US as mandated by US Law as part of the digital transition in the United States to switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. It's the same thing with the "HD Antennas" that are sold, just hook it up, slap it on a wall and never pay for cable again, well, that's true, you don't have to pay for cable because you'll only be getting what is available "over the air".

Why are you still using the old Microsoft Edge? I'm curious if you don't like the new version, or Windows didn't do it's job of updating properly.

Didn't people hook up the TV to the hills hoist and get good reception?

This device is likely intended for the North American market, and is a simple capacitor coupling to the mains neutral line. Hopefully. Unfortunately, there are a lot of reverse-wired outlets in older homes, where this thing probably becomes pretty dangerous to your health, your TV's health, or both. Anyway, this concept has been around for a long time - it is technically quite possible to receive off-air ATSC broadcast signals (North American terms) using such a device. I have personally been involved with arguably more sophisticated attempted implementations of this idea. The main issue (other than safety) is that you cannot give customers a predictable level of performance. Some will be happy, but many will not.

All the TV antennas suddenly stopped working except for 2 government channels in India. Reason, private channels started to encrypt their signals.