Reading this will save you money by providing an alternate way to put live HDTV content on your TV for free! I get around 70 channels in Toronto (50 in the suburbs) with an antenna I made from 4 coathangers and a balun ($5 on amazon)! You can purchase a PROPER antenna for around $30 - $200 for ease/looks if you desire but the BEST UHF antenna (Hoverman or Grey-Hoverman) is open source so it isn't available in stores!
You can get free DD 5.1 HDTV with an antenna pretty much anywhere in the US and Canada (worldwide too but I am ; this is uncompressed digital, better quality than cable or whatever HDTV. It is digital; there is no "noise" like in the analog days. Each 720p, 1080p or 4k channel can have numerous uncompressed 480p sub-channels - these are pretty close in quality to 720p on cable TV if their source is good (most of the time, few channels show 80s/90s reruns that haven't been upconverted - these are ok, not great quality); these have stereo audio, not 5.1 like the main channel. That means if your city "only" has 10 channels it may/likely have/has 40-50 actual channels.
You should find out what is available near you at rabbitears.info or tvfool.com - Toronto is ideal, most local stations broadcast from the CN Tower (you can even get them in a basement) and the majority of other channels are SW in Buffalo. So 1 antenna pointed (fixed) southwest is fine. In some areas there are 2 or more cities in different directions so you may want 2 antennas, a device that turns the antenna or just point between the 2 and maybe you get them all.
After that I recommend you build some cheap antennas since there are 3 antenna types with different purposes that may be best for you. Build a hoverman if you don't need VHF, it may pick up the VHF anyway. Build a simple bowtie to compare to the hoverman if you need VHF and the hoverman isn't getting it. See below for info on VHF vs UHF but UHF is usually the only thing to focus on.
Channels broadcast either VHF (being phased out) or UHF signals. The Hoverman is best for UHF and REALLY easy to build. A bowtie antenna is best for UHF and VHF - a bowtie is easy to build, a 2 bay bowtie is more complex but better and a 4 bay bowtie is best but more complicated to build. The third antenna type I will discuss is the yagi - it is the best at getting far away signals but is extremly complicated to build and is less broadband - it focuses on 1 channel (you can also make a wifi yagi to steal wifi from McDonalds or whatever... think about it, using a public IP from your computer desk - bask in the anonymity dear anon). If you live in the middle of nowhere 2 yagis pointed at different cities might be your best bet. I would recommend buying yagis instead of building if you can afford it, the design is quite complex and needs to be near perfect.
I'll leave it there for today, the above is what you should know about antennas before you put much effort/money in. I will post directions to build the Grey-Hoverman and mclapp's bowtie antennas below in case you want to start building. Those folks, Stampeder and Holl_Ands from the digitalhomecanada forum are the antenna gods, soon I will post some directions on how I built the Hoverman (not Grey-Hoverman, mine is a little bigger) and some 2-bay, 4bay bowties.
The GNU/GPL open source Grey Hoverman Antenna:
https://www.digitalhome.ca/d1/ota/superantenna/design.htm
Bowtie Antennas:
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