Broadcast TV

[Barry]

 I had an interesting thing happen and in this era of people giving up cable, I hope it can be helpful. Attached to my processor and my JVC  projector, I have had a 4K player, Apple TV and Verizon Cable.
 
For the last couple of decades, I have had a Broadcast TV antenna on the roof and never removed it. So I attached it to a Homeworx Broadcast TV tuner and then to my system, with surprising results.
1.  I get over 80 channels from my home on Long Island. Some are duplicate and some are foreign languages.  So I get 60 channels.
2.  Many of these channels, about 30, I do not get on cable. Many are from the next state.
3.  The best stations are broadcast in 720p or 1080i. The reception is exceptionally good, much better than the same channel on cable. And the sound is better also. Many stations, often showing old shows, are 480i.  Many of those shows look poor.
4.  There are shows on that are 60 years or even older! When filmed, most of these shows look very well. Gunsmoke looks great, as do most shows from CBS and Desilu.  Many filmed shows, liked Bonanza, are not a sharp but are viewable. Taped shows, from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, such As All in the Family look poor and show their age and deterioration. Film then was always sharper than tape, but was also more expensive.
5.  The network shows, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, & ABC and our local broadcast shows look surprising great and better than cable.
So if you are giving up cable, and even if you are not, you might want try Broadcast TV. The tuner cost about #40.

[Paul Heroy]

OTA has been better than cable/sat since HDTV started in 1998. Simple reason - it's got more bandwidth available because each "channel" has its own slot instead of being jammed into a pipe with hundreds of others, so less compression is needed. I bought a house in 1995 that just happened to have a big outdoor antenna on the roof, so when they fired up, I just needed to plug in a tuner. My local Raleigh TV station WRAL was a national leader in the HDTV transition. 

That was based on ATSC 2.0, and 3.0 has been in development for a while to add 4K and other stuff. But it was rebranded so there's now "NextGen TV". You can check your current market's status here. Input your zip code and it will show a list of local stations. Obviously, you'll need an updated tuner. They are pretty new, so there isn't anything at $40 but some new TVs have a NextGen tuner built in. There seem to be some interactive / internet features too. Unfortunately, as we know broadcast TV has been declining so even though the cost of upgrading to this isn't as high as the HDTV transition, it looks like it's a slower uptake by TV stations.

[AVSJeff]

Barry,

I use the same Mediasonic Homeworx 'Off-Air' tuner in my home theater and love it.

[Barry]

I think people would be surprised how good the picture is, and how many over the air stations there

[AVSCraig]

I think people would be surprised how good the picture is, and how many over the air stations there

Unfortunately when you live in the hills OTA is difficult to get. We have pretty poor reception. It's a different story in the city for sure.

[SRW1000]

OTA has been better than cable/sat since HDTV started in 1998. Simple reason - it's got more bandwidth available because each "channel" has its own slot instead of being jammed into a pipe with hundreds of others, so less compression is needed.

This used to be truer when the technology was new than it is today.  While each channel has its own slot most of our locals share that slice of bandwidth with numerous other subchannels.  So that precious bandwidth has to be split up between the main HD channel and anywhere between one to four SD subchannels of shopping channels, weather, or old reruns.

The result is pixelation, banding, and really obvious transitions.  Try watching any HD scene with confetti dropping and the image will look like an old mosaic.

We dropped satellite over five years ago, and that picture was similar to OTA.  

But OTA is free, so I'm more than happy to live with it, and I'm looking forward to the enhancements we'll see with ATSC 3.0, but I'll miss our OTA Tivo with lifetime pass.

Scott

[tripplej]

We are also using OTA. We ditched sat/cable long time ago due to ever increasing prices. For streaming, we only do amazon prime/netflix/hulu and we can do that directly with the TV.

I am still surprised that very few channels are 1080p in 2023!

[David Vaughn]

I took our antenna down this past year because I hadn't used it in close to 20 years. I guess I'm stuck with cable for now

[bmoney]

Haven’t had cable for close to 14 years now

We have a small he antenna behind our tv