"An ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) tuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America and South Korea that use ATSC standards."
If you bought a TV in the last six years or so, it will probably have an ATSC tuner in there that you have never used and (back to my conspiracy theory brain) I think that "they" really don't want you to know how to use it, mainly because it represents something truly free for a good portion of our population.
Free TV, yes, free, really free.
I bolted one of these on the side of our old house in Gibsons.
It cost $89 from Amazon and I mounted a wood "plate" on my siding, ran a coax cable through to the living room, attached that to a little amplifier and then to the coax in the back of my Samsung plasma TV. I then went into the TV menu, found the "scan" submenu and scanned for "AIR" signals, it was a success and we could pick up eight channels, a few in HD and the rest in SD, but nevertheless, very good quality.
I could go on about how, before this official version of an antenna existed I had made a test version out of coat hangers (instructions on Youtube folks - search for coat hanger HDTV) and even before that I had punched my GPS coordinates into a website calling itself TVFOOL and it predicted, rather accurately I should note, all the free channels I could receive at my location.
I won't go on though, as the message here is, if you are in a good location, you can receive free HD programming using this method and in Canada it is mandated by the CRTC. In addition, if you are within 30 or 40 miles of the USA border, you can also pick up their ATSC signals. It all depends on your own location and the LOS (line of sight) to the transmitters.
In our new location in Sooke though, we have no LOS to any transmitter because of mountains and terrain, so we are officially SOL.
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