BonzoAPD

Do you guys know anything about them? Are they affective?

This is for my grandma's house. She use to have an outdoor antenna but she had her roof replaced and had them take off the antenna since it was rusting out. She doesn't want cable or the dish. Just wants the regular tv stations so please don't tell me to go that route. Thanks.

mrbkkt1

they work o.k., i got the rca one w/ the booster and it was definately better, but still didn't get all channels. my grandmother lives on a mountain and she too didn't want cable. she never got used to having to "turn on" the antenna so i took it off.

THEOLDMAN

Depends on where you are. If you have too much interference you'll be suseptible to ghosting and if you're too far away (line of sight) your picture will have a lot of snow.

Grifter

we use them in the house
in the living room channel 2 and 4 doesnt come out as well as the others. back of tv faces east
in my room channel 13 doesnt come out well. back of tv faced west
my brothers room all channels come out well. facing south

:dunno:
give it a shot as the antenna costs like $15

sids1045

The problem with "rabbit ear" antennas is that they are, essentially, a gross oversimplification to the problem of over-the-air reception of television signals. Assuming your grandmother also lives in Ossining, she is more than 20 miles from the Empire State Building, where the NYC TV stations transmit from after the WTC was destroyed. The signal path between the ESB and Ossining is one of the most hostile to satisfactory TV reception, consisting of large steel-frame buildings and some hilly terrain.

TV signals are horizontally polarized...that is, the RF waves are transmitted in a plane parallel to the earth's surface. Rabbit ears are vertically polarized, so they won't receive enough of the horizontally polarized signal. At those frequencies, reception is via line-of-sight...that is, there must be a direct path (no bounces off of other objects) between the transmitting and receiving antennas for best results. Ghosting occurs when two or more instances of the same signal are received: the line-of-sight signal and others which bounce off of another object and arrive at the receiving antenna a fraction of a second later. If the signals are almost the same in signal strength, the TV set won't be able to tell them apart and will reproduce all of them. The radio waves that produce ghosting can bounce off of virtually any object...even airplanes in flight. If the line-of-sight signal is much stronger, it will override a "ghost" signal, but normally that only occurs within a few miles of the transmitting antenna.

I seriously doubt that your grandmother is going to be satisfied with rabbit ear reception so far from the transmitting antenna. But, they're so cheap these days that it might be worth a shot anyhow. You have very little to lose for trying, and who knows: her place might be in a "sweet spot" where there's little or no ghosting.