I found out all our indoor antenna attempts failed because when vinyl siding was installed on our house, they also installed an insulating foam board behind it that has aluminum foil on one side of the foam board. We are living inside a Faraday cage! So I had a long-range directional antenna installed on the roof of our house and visited https://www.antennaweb.org/ to find out where to aim it for the nearest strong stations. I could finally get a few stations in Redding, CA by pointing the antenna at Chico, CA.

A "long-range" directional TV antenna can theoretically reach 70 miles or so, but not much more due to the curvature of the earth's surface and the broadcasts needing "line of sight" straight shot to your antenna. If you're not down in a low area and have the antenna up on the roof, you should do OK.

We got this antenna: https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-LAVA-HD8008-Omni-Directional-Amplified/dp/B07DRK16ZS

and one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-HOMEWORX-HW130STB-Converter-Recording/dp/B01EW098XS for the DTV tuner with DVR function. Choose a model with an external power supply, because I had another brand of the same device once with an internal power supply that died. If it had been an external power supply that failed, I could have just replaced that part. The DVR function (which records to a 16GB USB flash drive) is useful to have because OTA TV stations broadcast what they do, when they want to. If you want to see a particular show and aren't staying up at 3am to watch it, just let the box record it to watch later.

You can also (if you have a PC and Internet access), go to the TitanTV website to find out what shows are on what channels in your area. Login and create an account and give it your zip code and choose Antenna to find the listings of stations you MIGHT be able to watch if you got your setup and rooftop antenna working well.

Even so, the over-the-air stations are still the same crap I remember from the past. "One-hour" shows are really only 40 minutes because the other 20 minutes are taken up with commercial advertising. The only person I know who actually watches OTA TV is a friend who lives out in Happy Valley and has no Internet access except through her phone. She uses the OTA TV, but sadly it seems she prefers to watch the mind-warping programming on Fox tv.

We canceled our cable TV service in 2009 and changed to unbundled Internet service from our only cable provider. If this stuff keeps getting even more expensive, I might go back to just books and radio.