Rabbit ears became a staple of TV in the early broadcast era of the 1940s and 1950s.
A lot of people still swear by this old-school style of antenna, designed during the analog TV days. If you have ever tried one after getting some advice on Reddit or elsewhere, you might have wound up with not-so-good results.
The design of rabbit-ears antennas became popular when antennas were the only game in town. It’s a low-gain antenna, optimized for VHF signals, which are typically found on channels 2 through 13.
The majority of U.S. broadcasters are now on the UHF band, which occupies channels 14 through 69. Rabbit ears are a type of dipole antenna so it is possible that if you live close to broadcast towers, this kind of setup will work just fine.
After the shift to digital TV signals in the mid-1990s, antenna makers such as Winegard, Antennas Direct, Channel Master and RCA started coming up with antenna designs that can better focus on specific TV signals, or signals from multiple directions.
In short, multi-directional or directional TV antennas designed with a medium-to-high gain work a lot better than a low-gain, desktop-style antenna like rabbit ears.
You should pay attention to what band your local broadcasters use (UHF or VHF), then pick a multi-directional or directional antenna. If you can mount a larger antenna in your attic, that’s great. A professional installation on a roof is even better.
Not everyone can use an outdoor antenna for OTA TV. An indoor TV antenna with a medium gain of about 6 to 10 db mounted high in a window or on a wall will be far better than rabbit ears sitting on a window sill or near a TV.
Low gain antennas generally have weaker signal reception, which can result in poor picture quality, frequent dropouts, and difficulty receiving certain channels. This is a big problem if you live in a location far from broadcast towers, where signal strength is weak.
Over-the-air TV from the digital ATSC 1.0 standard, and the new NextGen TV standard travel over short distances by line of sight. So you need to position an antenna where it can likely receive a TV signal.
Adding to the confusion, the world of TV antennas is rife with exaggerated marketing claims.
Some manufacturers advertise their antennas as having ranges of 100 miles or more, but these claims are often based on conditions that rarely exist in the real world.
Factors like the curvature of the Earth, the presence of buildings and trees, and even the weather can dramatically reduce the so-called range of an antenna.
Even if an antenna is marketed as having a range of 80 miles, in reality, it might only work well when you are 20 or 30 miles away from local broadcast towers.
Nostalgia can be nice. But if you’re picking a low-gain antenna that isn’t optimized for UHF and VHF, you might be leaving a lot of free TV up in the air, and not on your TV.
