And it's been kept a secret from you on purpose or intentionally. The pay tv companies didn't want a mass disconnect. It's like the previous lady said, we don't need all the gobs of (stupid dumbing down) ridiculous tv that they serve up. It's all too much and it's literally junk tv - brain rot really. The pay companies are banking on us choosing quantity over quality. Remember when in the beginning how they promised that pay tv was going to be commercial free? They are greedy fat liars. Who wants to be a slave to these liars? I'm lucky to have been able to figure out that a very specific roof antenna gets the best reception and the most possible channels that are out there in the air. Write back if you want to know the name. If it works for me, it'll work for you. All antennas are not created equally either. Which is why most gave up because it became a major project to convert to OTA (over-the-air) antenna tv. I have nothing to gain by telling you this information either. I am just lucky enough to live with someone who knows about wire and how airwave frequencies work. I'm sure you don't appreciate being scammed any more than the next person but that's exactly what happened. They only told you a small piece of the story. In fact, they flatly lied, telling everyone who was currently paying to do nothing - that they wouldn't be effected by the change to digital. Where I live everyone pays because there was very poor reception with those of us using antennas being lucky to get fuzzy snow reception and only 3 channels. So stop being a slave to pay tv and break free.