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Ever since we have switched to using various streaming services like Netflix my wife has been complaining about no local channels or just no new channels in general. Rather than do the antenna thing with foil and rabbit ears, I wanted to know are there any free options where I don't have to buy hardware to view live tv and possibly record it if it is legally allowed? If there are no free services then what would be the cheapest ones? Right now I have 2 macs 3 pcs and 3 raspberry pi's. I tried looking in the various sections on this part of the forum but it is a bit much to read through.
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In that case, you most likely need an ATSC-T tuner of some sort. The SiliconDust line of HDHomeRun tuners (Connect, Extend and Expand) have US-targeted models that support OTA broadcasts, and many users are happy with them; they are network devices that stream TV streams to your network rather than as a USB/PCI card. In general, you still need software to handle the tuning and guide downloads, although there are some easier options for this.
Beware, though, that TV streams in the US are MPEG-2 encoded, which means that lower-end devices (such as a Raspberry Pi) may not be able to handle them well, or may need a purchased license to enable the hardware decoders. Also, because the HD streams can be quite large and bandwidth intensive, it is not really recommended to stream them over WiFi unless you transcode them first.
Read through the Wiki pages, and search a bit online: there are MANY posts and tutorials about getting DVR software with ATSC OTA broadcasts in the US working, you just need to put some effort into it instead of expecting someone else to do it.
