[17671]

There was this device I remember seeing commercials for when I was young. I do not remember the name of it at all but I do remember it was advertised as some kind of electronic gadget you would plug into the 120 Volt electrical outlet of your home and it had some kind of coaxial jack on it that you would then connect to your TV set.

It was advertised as a device to turn your whole house electrical wiring as a super TV antenna. I have only seen this in commercials and in magazine advertisements and never seen it in person nor do I know anyone who had it.

I tried to search for this device oh gosh It has to be at least 30 years old but cant find anything on the internet nor any pictures of it. I was wondering if it ever worked or not?

Thanks.

 

[ExDilbert]

They are basically junk. At best, they are no better than a piece of wire. At worst, they can be dangerous or lethal if poorly made. They work by loosely coupling the antenna to the house wiring. They do pick up signals but not very well. They also pick up large amounts of interference and multipath from the house wiring. If you want to do something similar, just loosely wrap some insulated wire around the outside of the power cable and connect it to the antenna input. I've seen AM/FM radios that did something similar but the results were mixed. A properly designed antenna always works better.

 

[17671]

The Me from Today will never buy it, but the Me as a kid who had a Television set in one of the upstairs bedrooms that only worked on Antenna was curious about it but it was not sold in stores as far as I know and I forgot all about it. Either way I was just hoping to find a picture of it or even a name but that seems impossible

 

[bigoranget]

I remember this product. I believe it was called Power Antenna. There was short infomercials for that product in the early-mid 1990s. I would agree with @ExDilbert the product was crap for most people. If you were in an area that really needed an outdoor antenna to get any kind of watchable signal, this product definitely wouldn't have improved reception. If you lived close to the transmitters you would get really bad multipath. I also remember many amplified indoor antennas during the 1990s as well. I tried many of those to get WNYO from Buffalo (I lived on Hamilton Mountain at the time). I found that the powered antennas only marginally improved the Toronto signals and maybe the signals from Grand Island. Channels 2, 4 and 49 were just not possible to receive with any kind of indoor antenna where I lived growing up.

 

[JamesK]

The Me from Today will never buy it, but the Me as a kid who had a Television set in one of the upstairs bedrooms that only worked on Antenna was curious about it but it was not sold in stores as far as I know and I forgot all about it. Either way I was just hoping to find a picture of it or even a name but that seems impossible

There have been a lot of scam gadgets sold over the years. One, a friends father fell for, was a colour TV adapter, that was supposed to convert a B&W TV to colour. It consisted of a sheet of clear plastic, tinted blue at the top, pink in the middle and green at the bottom, IIRC, which was placed in front of the screen.

 

[ExDilbert]

I remember those colour TV "converters." They weren't lying, because it did change the picture to colour even if it looked ridiculous with most content. Some actual colour TVs of the time didn't look much better due to the nature of NTSC, and the poor design and quality control of many colour TVs that used CRTs.

 

[SatTv1994]

I found one of those devices in an old bin. It's about a 1 1/2" square beige cube to be plugged into the wall on one side and a co-ax male on the opposite side. The markings are "Techcessories 15-1835". I probably purchased it at Radio Shack about 40 years ago. It never really worked. A cheap indoor antenna was much better. I even had better success with a coat hanger. (Used a coat hanger in a Florida hotel to watch a 1976 team Canada game there while on honeymoon. Game was not on their cable)

 

[Mike Lang]

You’d get more success with some tin foil.