[EtienneDeLyon]

In some areas, you can 'pirate' live TV directly from the sky!

You need this thing called an 'antenna' which captures invisible radio waves and decodes them into a picture with audio. You can't pause or rewind, and you have to be in front of the TV at specific times, so it is not precis the same, but you can access TV this way.

[jackhackett]

Not ATSC 3.0 channels. People very far from large urban areas don't have many channels to choose from.

[IncreasePosts]

It's not piracy if the people who have the rights to the content are distributing it like that.

[kevin_thibedeau]

ATSC 3 will fix that loophole.

[bb88]

The last time I watched OTA/Cable was over a decade ago. I remember paying $120/month for cable, and getting low quality highly recompressed HD shows, which looked terrible on the 1080p TV I had at the time. Digital artifacts made the stream not very pleasant to watch at all.

Technically it was "1080p HD", but in reality it was more like 720x480 upscaled and smoothed.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Digital cable is generally more heavily compressed than HD OTA primary channels (usually x.1 subchannel). OTA only gets bad when they pack in too many subchannels.

[badc0ffee]

You can even use something like HDHomeRun to watch this content on your phone/tablet.

(Personally I only use OTA for sports)

[nkrisc]

Yes, I’m well aware of that. I spent much of my childhood adjusting the antenna to get better reception. But I don’t see how that’s relevant.

[myvoiceismypass]

Don't know your age, but today's $20 indoor antennas are pretty unobtrusive and don't require much adjustment beyond the initial placement. Its a nicer experience with digital hd antennas for sure than what we experienced 30+ years ago. Mine is a single flat antenna taped onto the wall behind my tv and shared to all other tvs and devices via hdhomerun + plex.