I found a full page ad for this antenna in the Sept. '03 issue of Popular Mechanics. Is this thing for real? It seems too good to be true! It uses something called "Spilateral Technology". A Google Search for XiumAir turned up a poster on an Oklahoma HDTV forum that has it and says it works great. All of the other "hits" were for stores selling the antenna. I'd like to hear the opinions of anyone here that has this antenna or anyone who knows about this "Spilateral Technology". The links below are for the poster at the Oklahoma forum and the other is for the antenna itself.
As hdtvprimer.com says, “Upstart antennas companies build market share by exaggerating what their antennas can do”. But the XiumAir antenna transcends that. This is the worst joke of an antenna I have ever seen. Rabbit ears will work better.
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I found another thread on the AVS forum with 2 posters that have the cylinder one (without the parabolic dish). The both say it works for them. I have yet to find a poster on any site that purchased the Xium and said it did not work? Has anybody?
The antenna claims to be a high performance, non-directional antenna for VHF, UHF, and FM. It is normally sold without a powered amplifier.
1. The antenna employs what appears to be a DBS dish. Such a dish will not significantly focus UHF and will be almost invisible to VHF. For a dish to focus radio waves significantly its diameter needs to be at least 4 feet for UHF or 40 feet for VHF. (The channel Master 4251 was an excellent UHF antenna with a 7-foot parabolic reflector.)
2. A parabolic dish works by optically focusing the signal. Obviously this will result in a very directional antenna. But Xium claims this antenna is completely non-directional. Given that its dish is too small to do anything, that is probably true. But in most situations the lack of gain is a liability, not an asset.
3. A parabolic dish for UHF or VHF should be made of a mesh screen. If you put a solid dish on a mast, the wind will blow it down.
4. The actual antenna is a small cylindrical unit about the size of a coffee can. The only thing that it could contain that would enable it to rival the VHF performance of rabbit ears would be a large hunk of ferrite. Such a piece of ferrite would weigh 40 pounds and cost $500. Ferrite will magnify the apparent cross-section of an antenna. There are no other tricks that will make an antenna with a cross-section of 1/10th of a wavelength perform like a dipole. (Countless people have searched for such tricks.)
This antenna is a hoax of some sort. It will not perform as well as a dipole at VHF, and probably not for UHF either.
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I agree with Ken. I'd take my money to Radio Shack and buy a small UHF antenna and pocket the difference. The Xium reminds me of the "whole house AC wiring antennas" that pop up every few years.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
This message has been edited by BiggerDee on Aug 18, 2003 12:30 PM
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How can anybody comment on “spilateral technology”. Xium won’t tell anybody what it is. My guess is they have coiled a VHF dipole into two spirals and stuffed it into a plastic can. Many people have tried this. It results in an antenna that ignores VHF. It will show some life on UHF, but will have a narrow bandwidth. This assumes the company even exists. I am convinced their entire website is fiction.
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According to the BBB, “The company has informed the BBB that the antennae works best in city or suburban areas. The company advises consumers living 60 + miles away from a city or suburb that the antennae will not perform satisfactorily in those areas.”
I will also quote: “…this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to unanswered and unresolved complaints.”
No surprise there. As no specs are listed by Xium, the marketing hype rules – one of my definitions of snake oil. If you think a coffee can looks better than a yagi or rabbit ears, this is the product for you. You will probably get more performance for less money using “traditional” antennae, but I would not presume to question how much value this form factor provides to anyone else.
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Almost forgot -- again, from the BBB listing:
"This company advertises a Television antennae that plugs into an electrical outlet, a diet product, and electronic pet products, television accessories, audio and video gadgets, home and healthcare, security, mental enhancement software.
Complaints relate to the Television antennae."
Anon Note: no complaints about the mental enhancement software.
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It's an interesting design. You can go to the patent office's front page to install a free .tiff viewer that can handle their image format. I think they sent me to www.alternatiff.com for the download. This allowed me to see the images. It's woth the download. Like I say, it's an interesting design, but I can't see how it would be better than anything else (or even as good as). It's basically two PCB's with spirals etched onto them and they are connected in the center to make an X.
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I try to give any new idea a chance, I suppose the first caveman to try to roll a rock rather than push it got strange looks too at first, but this antenna design... really seems out there to me. I am not any sort of antenna guru, but I don't see how this thing is going to "catch a wave"... radio wave, that is.
You know... the design reminds me of another item I saw advertised on late night TV: That cell phone antenna extender that looks sort like a little spiral piece of gold on a plastic label that you're supposed to glue to your cell phone. Anybody else seen it?
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The patent artwork makes clear to me that this is a “Capacitive-hat Shield-radiator” antenna. The SpiLateral spiral network is a capacitive hat. A capacitive hat is a device that does not interact with the radio wave in any way. It merely serves as a place where electrons can pile up. If you see a vertical whip with a small disk or cross on top, that disk or cross is a capacitive hat.
The user supplied coax is the actual antenna. The performance of the antenna is determined by the orientation of the coax and, if the coax is short, what it is connected to. In some situations, for some frequencies this antenna will slightly outperform a half-wave dipole, but in the general case, it will not. This capacitive hat is not big enough for VHF, and so very little VHF signal is coupled in. (That is, most of the VHF signal on the shield stays on the shield and never makes it to the receiver.) Antennas in which the shield is the pickup are more susceptible to interference from appliances.
Curiously, the Xium website picture of the SpiLateral shows it mounted for vertical polarization. Most TV stations use horizontal polarization. If the coax continues vertically away from the unit then the antenna will pickup only whatever is scattered off of nearby diagonally oriented objects if the TV station uses horizontal polarization. The XiumAir antenna (the one with the dead-weight dish attached) is correctly mounted horizontal, although the position of the coax lead-in is not shown on the website. I see no real evidence that the “designer” of these antennas knows anything about antennas.
This message has been edited by KQ6QV on Aug 19, 2003 6:05 PM
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>>Richard, what did you think of the design and claims?
Well, Ken already touched on those things that made me skeptical. A biggey is the dish but claiming omni directional??? Yet I was still intrigued...
Ken continues to blast the thing though. I have my doubts but a parabolic dish is something DX'ers use (need to find that website - Jim Adams, do you still have that link?). It is quite different from many of the other "HDTV marketing hype" antennas we see reported here. If I had more time and would get a 30 day return I would give it the real test here in multipath hell!
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Richard. The radiation direction of this antenna is perpendicular to the first few feet of coax. For XiumAir the coax runs straight towards the dish. Thus the head radiates away from the dish! Even the Xium website says “point it away [at 90 degrees] from the station”. Don’t waste your time with this antenna. A coat hanger will work as well.
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For $79, I have some coat hang..make that high resolution cylindrical alloy HDTV reception enhancement units for sale. All come with a handy "hang mounting system". A t-shir...I mean "snow avoidance shield" can be purchased and installed for an additional $29 in your chice of sizes: S, M, L, XL. Call now, operators are standing by!!
What would ice the cake for this Xium unit would be if the "hat" were mounted in a can made of metal! The phrase "There's a sucker born every minute" comes to mind!
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This thing has been out for at least a year. I would have hoped by now that someone would have done some head to head testing of this antenna with the more established antenna technologies. I think I will suggest this to the guys at A-Tech Fabrication. We'll see if they ROTFLTAO at my suggestion or they actually take it up and do the test.
And if you act without delay, we'll include a roll of Aluminum Foi.. I mean, Omni Directional Signal Enhancement Space Alloy. Merely tear off a few inches of this secret NASA material and form it around the Dee-Lux HDTV antenna and viola, all directions at once!
You won't even need the optional broom handl.. I mean, Magic Aiming Wand.
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I'd like to announce here that I am replacing my DirecTV satellite setup with teh xium antenna units. The following is the last picture of my dish arrangement before I remove the dishes and install Xium units:
I should be able to receive ever known channel when completed!
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