On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 08:23:10AM -0500, Don Tai via talk wrote:
I've been using Over the Air OTA TV for 10 years now, and have been happy with the free service. The digital signals are uncompressed, providing visibly higher quality images than Rogers (My Mum's service). I receive 17 digital channels, Southern Ontario and Buffalo, despite my neighbour's large evergreen. OTA works well during clear, rain and snow storms, but may go out during foggy weather.
ATSC is very much compressed (with MPEG2 unfortunately, unlike Europe that went with MPEG4 for DVB-T when they went digital a couple of years later). It is just not as insanely compressed as what Rogers likes to do to fit more channels in to the bandwidth available. Of course if you are only using it for the audio and not visual, the compression level doesn't matter at all.
You will need a digital TV (slim width one), and an antenna. The antenna can be as simple as a coat hanger, but a better one will get you more stations. Simply attach the antenna to your TV, place the antenna near a window and rescan your TV with the antenna option and presto, free digital uncompressed TV stations will magically appear. There is no cost. If you dislike it you just rescan your TV to cable.
tvfool.com will generally tell you in which direction to point your antenna, though downtown there may be signal bouncing off nearby buildings, so you might need to experiment. A free TV guide is available at https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/ just put in your postal code, antenna, "Local Over the Air Broadcast" and a schedule appears.
-- Len Sorensen