The shorter the runs the better, however our antenna is at the eave of a 2 story house and coax goes down to the basement, splits and proceeds to rooms, and we still get a decent signal.

Is your reception marginal - i.e. fringe? You might have to consider an antenna-mounted amplifier. I needed one when I lived 50 miles from NYC.

Unless a reasonable internet signal isn't available in your location, i wonder why you're not considering using a streaming TV service. I switched from being a long time DISH customer to You Tube TV, The monthly cost is reasonable and the quality and ease of use are outstanding. Unless the monthly cost is an issue ($65 or less from other providers), I personally wouldn't mess with an antenna and wiring. The programming is too limited. Save yourself the cost of equipment and wiring. If your internet option is something inflexible like Sat internet, different story.

Hard to say how fringe yet... but figured an amp could be put in the attic near where the antenna coax comes in - could jsut put the splitter right there after the amp... (I really need to get up to the property w/ a small TV and antenna run off my vehicle power and 'test' it first hand to see how I'm doing w/ height)

We do stream. But we also rediscovered and like old-school local OTA TV. Other than 1 or 2 channels - could just about live w/o YouTube TV (or similar) these days. But would keep Netflix etc. for movies and what not...

thanks

My YouTube TV subscription includes all local OTA broadcasting TV stations. We use streaming for national and local news from such stations and for sports from them and from the sports broadcasting networks, Does your streaming service include all local stations?

"I've asked for a shelf in the broom closet of the laundry room for terminating our CAT5 drops and the fiber from the street."

Instead of a shelf, have a large piece of plywood installed in the closet on which you can hang all your equipment* and neatly route the wires. Attach a power strip to supply the power to the equipment.

*Most equipment has slots on the bottom for mounting vertically.

Bruce that's really good info. I'd looked at the Plex and thought of that as something I might add later on. But I see you're point - it can essentially convert and replace the need for a full coax distribution. And with fewer cables you hardly need to worry about signal loss or a need of an amp! Brilliant!

Youtube TV does not stream all local channels in my area and I bet it doesn't in just about any other area - only the major networks. In most larger populated areas there's a lot of digital OTA channels that are not otherwise available via cable, satellite, streaming services.

In my area there's probably 40 or 50 OTA channels. Now I admit most are junk but there's maybe 8 or 10 that aren't half bad and not available otherwise.

For example I get 4 PBS channels locally - only the main 1 is on Youtube. There's a couple of local sports channels, probably 4 or 5 channels that run old movies and TV shows 24x7, a 24x7 local weather channel etc... And of course the mainstream networks too. And it's all free with great HD picture quality in most cases.

While there are some cable channels I like which of course are available via Youtube TV, satellite or local cable provider - for $60-$100 or whatever - I could honestly live without most of them. We do have Netflix and HBOMax and will keep those at any rate.

When watching the same program OTA we aren't competing with others for bandwidth. And sometimes the TV is just on 'in the background'.

Before switching to Youtube I used to have Dish and upgraded their satellite receiver with an optional OTA tuner card. It did a really good job of integrating OTA channels and satellite channels in the same device and DVR. I had the choice between watching the local channels via satellite (slight delay) or the same local channels directly OTA. Plus the cable channels. The value there was that if the sat signal was lost, still could always get locals OTA. And I could DVR twice as many events at the same time. Rarely if ever did I need it but a feature nonetheless. I've since replaced the Dish w/ Youtube.

Not trying to push it on any one else but I'll always keep and appreciate my free OTA options.

I'm sure one's TV watching habits and preferences as well as location characteristics drive much of why different people prefer different approaches. I guess when I said "all local stations", what that meant to me was those of interest to us because we've never had access to them otherwise and our TV watching is limited enough that the 3 legacy broadcast networks plus one PBS station is more than enough. We may get a few more than that but all are rarely watched.

My house is in an area of hills and valleys so broadcast TV over the air really isn't an option - for a long time it was either a sat service (why I had Dish) or cable TV (which I had before that). Now, a streaming service (You TubeTV) provides enough of what we watch and is cheaper and more flexible. At our second home, in a different area but also one of hills and valleys, broadcast TV over the air is also not feasible to use but we can use the same You Tube TV subscription there too. And we can use it at both places at the same time when my wife and I are each in a different location. Also, the library function allows us to watch the few shows we like (even separately but at the same time) without paying attention to different broadcast schedules and without worrying about a DVR capacity to manage. If there is a limit to the library function (like recording but not actually recording because YTTV records everything once for anyone to use) , we've never run into it.

Because I now pay a bit less than half as much to YTTV for full TV service at two houses, separately or simultaneously, as I was paying to Dish for limited service to one house, I feel like I'm ahead of the game.

My situation is somewhat similar to Elmer's: two houses, poor OTA reception in both. In my formerly primary home (50 mi from NYC), I was able to get OTA reception, but it took a big antenna on a 20 foot mast with an antenna mounted preamp (Channel Master 7777). For internet, I had fiber. However, sometimes, although the picture was always OK, the dialog would break up so my wife persuaded me to get cable. The local cable company won't let Verizon put any TV on their FIOS network - a sweetheart deal with the Town!

In my second home, in the mountains, there was no way I could get OTA, being that my house is on the side of a mountain, which is between me and the two TV transmitters, which are 30 or 40 miles away, so I got cable there. However, I was wandering around on my property and found a big defunct antenna on the ground. It turns out that it belonged to my neighbor, who used to use it before he got cable. I didn't ask him how long ago he used; perhaps it was before the stations moved to UHF (it is a VHF antenna).

I can certainly appreciate the OP's wish for OTA, all the on-line solutions seem to think that all PBS stations are the same. In both locations there are multiple PBS stations, and each station has some local programming which the others don't carry.