OTA stands for Over-the-air television reception and has been commonly available free-of-charge to consumers in Canada since the early 1950s using a TV antenna.
 

 

OTA should not to be confused with FTA or Free-to-air, which is a form of satellite TV reception.

OTA is broadcast either in analog or Digital television (DTV, which includes HDTV). The quality improvement of DTV over Analog is vast. Canada uses the ATSC (8VSB) DTV standard used in the U.S.A., South Korea, and Taiwan. ATSC consumer products are not compatible with the DVB-T DTV standard used in all other countries except Japan, which uses its own incompatible ISDB-T standard for DTV.