TV signal boosters

Can TV signal boosters (e.g. in Argos) be used to boost a portable TVs reception which uses rabbit ears or are they specifically for boosting the reception of a cable/satellite signal that has been split?

If you are getting a poor signal with an antenna (e.g. rabbit ears) then boosting the signal will not really help, and may do the opposite. Boosting a poor signal will not improve the signal. You need to address the poor initial reception - e.g. using a larger antenna if necessary.

Clubman is right. You can't as such boost a signal you don't have! You could try it, but really, rabbist ears are only suited to high reception areas.
The other thing to bear in mind, is that TV aerial reception is a bit of a black art in fringe areas. You can spend hours getting the set-up correct and it could turn out to be the smallest thing having the largest impact...

What should of course be the correct solution is for RTE to make themselves available for FREE on satelitte so that people with poor analogue reception could get a dish for a one off fee to get good signal. but they claim that because of rights, set-up costs etc they can't do it, but I would submit that they could if they just charged 25 euro a year for the card to people who proved irish residnecy and they also made it a pre condition to have to hold TV licence to get it.
Ask people on boards.ie (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=56)
or irish TV(http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=56)