TV OTA vs. OTT

OTA is an acronym for Over the Air, meaning antenna. OTT means Over the Top and refers to watching TV using the internet (also called streaming). Millions of people around the world have been replacing cable with OTT monthly offerings, due to cable's extremely high fees and multi-year no-cut contracts. All of the OTT offerings have a free period, usually seven days to test and see if you like the service.

Many people are also discovering antennas today are not like the old days and offer many more free channels. Additionally, antennas produce a better picture than any of the cable or OTT services (excluding 4K) because they do not compress the signal coming into your house. Also, there are many relatively inexpensive (less than $20) indoor antennas that can be attached to a window, so no need to climb up on the roof as we did in the past. Unfortunately rural areas still mostly lack local service.

There are eight OTT players with live TV vying for your TV dollars: PlayStation Vue, AT&T TV NOW, AT&T Watch, Hulu, Sling TV, Philo, FuboTV, and YouTube TV. Each has a curated list of offerings, with some catering to sports fans, or families, or variety. Most offer multiple options to use and pay for more or less channels.

They all stream live TV and selected movies over the internet and require a smart TV or a box, like fireTV, Roku, Chromecast, etc. Luckily, each device is a one time purchase, some as low as $24.95. Some services do not play on all boxes, so check before you buy. Almost all offer addons, like Netflix and Prime purchased through them or separately. Many, but not all offer live sports.

Disney+ is coming this fall, but will not offer live TV, just movies, old TV reruns, and some original content, like Netflix and Prime. Incidentally, Netflix will have 158.8 million viewers of the 182.5 million people using OTT services in 2019. Amazon Prime Video is the second most-popular service behind Netflix, with 96.5 million subscribers.

AT&T TV (not to be confused with AT&T TV NOW or AT&T Watch) is a new service that is meant to eventually replace satellite services AT&T Uverse and AT&T DirectTV. It is sold as a two year bundle and prices like traditional cable. Also, like cable, has penalties for early termination, requires a box like cable, and extra fees.

The major benefits for considering OTT is to save money, as much as $100 per month or more by not paying for all the extra channels on cable that you do not watch. Some people switch out one service for another, such as for those that provide sports in the fall, then switching again in spring or adding Netflix to watch new series, then dropping when the series is over. This adds variety and still keeps costs down. Services begin as low as $15 per month and can go as high as close to $100 per month.

Many seniors especially, have found that an antenna alone provides enough entertainment and is totally free of monthly payments. Others have added an antenna as a backup for OTT sports blackouts or when there are contract disputes and local channels are temporarily unavailable. Many places have over thirty channels available for free with an antenna. You can find more info. Use the search box for 'antenna'. 

OTA vs. Cable

Satellite and cable TV companies have massive networks, carrying 100s of channels to millions of customers. To effectively service these customers, they use digital compression technologies to shrink the size of the signal, allowing more channels to fit on the cable. When compressing the signal, some of the original data is lost. The result is the picture on your TV loses sharpness and detail.

We have been accustomed to cable and with no comparison, the picture we see is presumed to be the best that can be put out by our TV screen. Many channels are not even delivered in 1080p as we presume. They are still delivered as 720p. The only reason pictures look better is that the new flat screen TVs are adept at up-scaling the signal to make it look better (even though it is not as good as it could be).


OTA means Over The Air. It is difficult to compare the new TV antennas with the old rabbit ears, because the rabbit ears were analog and the new antennas are digital. Using an antenna to pick up a signal over the air provides an uncompressed signal directly to your TV. The results are significantly noticeable and better than cable. A few friends and I have recently added antennas and comparing the picture is as easy as clicking on the input to go from cable to OTA. In every case on each TV the resulting picture is remarkably better with an antenna.


Incidentally, if your cable package blacks out some sports, pick up an antenna, just for game day. They are cheap and can be easily hung on a wall or in a window with a pin or sticky tape. Also great if you want to watch TV out by the patio or pool, no extra wiring, just drag out your TV and attach an antenna.

OTA vs. OTT

The often used abbreviations can be confusing. Think of OTA (Over The Air) as using a TV antenna, where the signal comes into your antenna, literally over the air from satellite or huge broadcast antenna at a TV or radio station, vs. on a cable.
Think of  OTT (Over The Top) as directly accessing the internet via a physical cable (such as the one that goes into your modem/router LINK). WiFi also gets its input from that cable. It refers to audio, video, and other media transmitted via the Internet without cable or direct-broadcast satellite television systems controlling content. No TV tuner or receiver is necessary.

OTT devices which support streaming include Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, and FireTV, etc. OTT services include video on demand services like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sky Go, BBC iPlayer, etc.

Bottom line, OTA uses the air outside of your house to receive signals and OTT uses cables outside of your house to receive signals. They both use cables from the wall to devices inside the house.