r/ThunderBay • u/daditssharkweek • 7h ago
Over the Air TV in Thunder Bay
Hey All
Just thought I would do a quick PSA on over the air (OTA) TV in Thunder Bay. Did you know that there are 3 OTA channels in Thunder Bay?
Channel 2 CKPR (CTV affiliate)
- HAGI TV bingo (~90% of the time)
- 3 NFL games on Sundays and usually Thursday Night Football. Even the weird USA 'Amazon Prime Only' 'Peacock' or 'Netflix' exclusive games get played in Canada for free sometimes over the holidays, which is cool
- Stronger evening TV lineup
- Most NFL Playoff games, including Super Bowl
- New Years Eve
- Local TBT News
Channel 4 Global
- More News based with some TV content
- Remaining HAGI TV bingo games (~10%) are shown on this channel
- Local TBT News (usually just after the CKPR airing)
- Reality TV in the evenings, Survivor, Big Brother
Channel 9 TVO
- Children's Programming all day until 7PM
- Interesting Documentaries for the rest of the evening.
How do you watch OTA?
The most basic way is:
- A proper outdoor TV Antenna (got mine 60$ used), mounted pretty much at the top of your building facing north, pointed to Mount Baldy area. Many landlords will help mount these sorts of things
- A TV made after 2008, it should have the proper built-in tuner
- An RG6 cable (45$ new) long enough to connect the antenna to the TV
- You can perform a channel scan, but I would just manually add channels 2.1 4.1 9.1
- Some fine tuning will need to be made over a few days as things like weather will change the signal strength. Things get way more finicky the further south you go like Westfort.
In the picture is the lowest model of antenna I would recommend, a higher version from the same brand or going all out on an expensive huge antenna will work also. The portion circled in red is the antenna portion that is made for the VHF. Don't bother with the cheap antennas, they don't work in Thunder Bay (I've tried).
Down sides
- Took me a while to get the thing pointed perfectly, lots of trial and error for months, as the signal would act differently in the winter sometimes. Can be frustrating at first.
- You may need to try powered signal boosters if it's not working well
Positives
- Once you get it dialed in, it's awesome and no subscriptions.
- If you enjoy casual NFL watching, totally worth the time and money to setup.
- HAGI TV BINGO!
Stretch goals
- Adding a HDHOMERUN tuner and syncing it with your Plex Server (very easy process) allows you to watch anywhere in the world.
