I am sure many are well aware of this, but I still encounter people who do not know about free HD TV channels you can enjoy.

I thought this would be a good preparedness topic, since it is a great way to save money by eliminating your cable bill and also a way to receive news if there is an interruption in cable service.

South of Pittsburgh, with my digital TV antenna located in a window upstairs and facing the city, I can receive 40+ channels, half of which are worthwhile to me.

I get 4 or more news channels (Fox, ABC, NBC, etc), and several channels with just comedy or law and order type shows. My favorite is a channel called Quest (40-4) that plays everything the History Channel aired back in the day before it went down the toilet, such as modern marvels, engineering disasters, axeman, etc. Also there are the public access channels with various programming, including concerts, local history, and home improvement shows. I can get Pittsburgh’s public access channels and Morgantown’s.

There are plenty of cooking, home shopping, paid ads, religious, spaghetti westerns, Spanish cartoons, and local sports channels that are no use to me but maybe you will enjoy them.

You need at a minimum a $30-ish antenna. Search TV antenna on Amazon and you can see the popular and well reviewed ones. You can mount better antennas on the outside of your house, but sitting one in an upstairs or attic window ledge will get the job done. In my last home I ran the feed into the typically provided amplifier, then into a splitter to run to various rooms and be watched simultaneously.

Your TV also needs to be compatible with the digital signals. Once you connect your antenna, select the correct input, then your tv should be able to scan for channels and list them for you. I always do my scanning on a nice clear day to get the best results. Maybe this should be done on a nice clear night though, that I am not sure. Sometimes you have to rescan to find a channel that changes channel number for some reason unknown to me.

Your reception can be impacted by the weather, but local strong signals won’t be impacted.

And as always you can economically supplement your programming with a firestick or similar device to enjoy free or paid for movies and shows.

Right now a lot of programming is discounted or free due to the shut down.

Enjoy!