Consumer Reports is running an article titled Free Over-the-Air TV Is Going to Get Better. They're rolling out a new standard, ATSC 3.0.
According to the article, you'll be able to watch OTA (over the air) TV on your phone or tablet! I wrote an article a few years back wondering why you couldn't already.
It's a fairly long and very informative article, but very much worth a read. It only talks about American broadcasts, no word about when or if it will reach other countries, but my guess is it won't be long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:42PM
Ideally, an antenna should be 1/4 of the wavelength of the carrier wave. For FM radio around 100MHz, the full wavelength is 3 metres. So, a 75cm antenna is best. This can be achieved with 75cm of coiled wire (or even 75cm of etched wire) inside a smaller device but manufacturers are too stingy to add such components. For UHF television transmission, frequencies generally used are from 470MHz to 890MHz [wikipedia.org]. So, one or more antennas ranging from 15cm to 8.4cm would be required.