RadioBanter - Xium TV dish type antenna

In article n%qUc.312561$JR4.132702@attbi_s54, Dave wrote:

I saw in September Popular Mechanics an advertisement for this TV antenna.
Do any of you know anything about it? It kind of seems to good to be true. I
have a cabin and would like to buy an antenna for it.
Thanks for your opinions.

And, things which seem to be true, usually are.

My guess... looking at a Web-page description of the antenna and its
"spilateral" technology, is that it's likely to behave like a compact
omnidirectional antenna located in front of a single reflector. The
dish is far too small to deliver a significant amount of focusing/gain
as a parabolic reflector, at least at the lower VHF frequencies...
it's barely a half-wavelength across. You might get a couple of dB of
gain (relative to a dipole) but I don't think you'd get more.

Hmmm... in looking at the "goxium.com" web page, I observe that the
description of this antenna says that it is "all-directional",
compared to a "brand antenna" which is "directional", but the
describive blurb claims that "The specially designed 'dish-like'
parabolic reflector provides better directional and omni-directional
grounding characteristics for ideal center-frequency tuning of local
broadcast signals."

So... from what I can see, it's an omni, which means that it has
little or no directional gain, which means that it's not well-suited
for use in a weak-signal / deep-fringe area, or where multipath
reflections from nearby mountains or buildings or trees tend to cause
"ghosts" in the picture.

Seems like an expensive solution, compared to an ordinary roof-mount
omni antenna having similar directional gain characteristics.

For your situation (I assume "cabin" means "quite a ways away from the
city") you'll probably be happiest with a high-gain "deep fringe"
VHF/UHF beam antenna (a log-periodic, with a corner-reflector for
UHF). Mount it on a mast, as high as is practical. If the stations
you want to receive aren't all in the same direction, consider adding
a remote-controlled rotator.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!