Does anyone know anyway to make rabbit ears work better?

Question

Living in a basement apartment. no cable no outdoor aerial

Answer 1

get them hearing aids.....nothing crueller than letting your rabbit stay deaf

Answer 2

rabbit ears will work if your close enough to the transmitter tower, like within 10 miles. Theres a link bellow that will let you input your zip code to find out what channels are available to you and what size antenna you would need. Putting an inline amp might help. Amps are measured in Decibels or Dbs, the higher the better. Some claim that there is a noise amplification in some amps but I havent really been able to see the difference (although its not like I test alot of these things). I have tried to run an amp to an amp and that negated all signal, probably the noise amplification getting in the way of the true signal.

I had a set of rabbit ears for the second tv in the bedroom, then I had to give them back to the person that owned them. I then put a 6 foot chunk of speaker cable (copper) to the TV and that worked better than the rabbit ears.

The above explanation with the splitter and a jumper to the non functioning cable jack essentially grounds the outer jacketing to the piece of cable and splitter. I am gonna try that one myself.

Side note, if you live in the US all analog signals will stop on Feb 17th 2009. You will need an ATSC tuner/receiver to get any over the air channels. Most of these out right now are HDTV tuners that will also work with a regular TV.

Answer 3

I don't know if this works for anyone else, but, I don't have cable or satelite or anything but regular broadcast TV myself. So, I have to depend on "rabit ears" to get any sort of reception.

What I do, is that instead of just attaching the cable that comes with (usually is already attached to) the antennae directly to the back of the TV, is I first attach a regular (short as possible, like 3'-6' dual axel cable to the back of the TV.

Then, take a splitter (cheap, a couple of bucks at Radio Shack, cheaper at like WalMart, I think) and attach the other end of the cable that you have on the back of the TV to it. Then, you will have left 2 places still to attach cables to.

Take another short cable and attach one end to the splitter and the other end to the cable coming from the antannea (rabbit ears) - so that it reads like "antaenna in" to TV. Then, even if you are not paying for cable, you ought to have somewhere in your home, the think that sticks out of the wall that you would hook your TV directly too if you had cable.

Take a third cable, attach one end of it to the wall cable inlet, and the other to the third and last opening on the splitter. Then, it ought to work a lot better. That is, if you can follow my directions which I know aren't very clear. But I tried.

Good Luck.

Answer 4

Starting from the basement, you're already at a major disadvantage. The most significant impact on the reception of VHF/UHF antennas is elevation since the lower the antenna is to the ground, the more obstructions there are to block out the signals. If you can install the antenna in a higher location within the building (the higher the better) and run a connection direct to your TV, this would improve the reception.

Answer 5

You should probably try buying one of those set top antennas that are a little more high tech than just old fashioned rabbit ears. It would really help if you could get then outside somehow, even if it was just outside of a window. Lastly, try attaching some aluminum foil to them, that of course is they very low tech solution but it actually does help.

Answer 6

Attach a satelite dish to it.

As long as you are in the basement your rabbit ears wont work for ****. Time to invest in that external Ariel.

Answer 7

Try giving it more carrots.