This only works if you have a yard and no Homeowners Association to answer to:
I live out in the middle of nowhere, the nearest cable service is 15 miles away, there are no broadcast stations within reach without a 250 ft tall antenna mast.
But I can receive over 3,000 channels with my Free To Air satellite system; I don’t pay any bills. I have about $600 invested in equipment, most of it in the 6 ft C band dish and controller. But if you are a good scavenger you can do it for nearly nothing as there is lots of functional old equipment out there that people will give away just to get rid of it.
I could double the number of channels I could receive with a larger C-band dish and chopping down a few trees.
You can get into KU band satellite and receive about 1500 channels for much less money ($200 or less), with a 3 ft diameter dish, or even less. Some even re-purpose Dish Network/ Direct TV dishes to work with Free to Air, although that is not ideal.
My only problem is that I am not a linguist, and half the channels I can receive are in a languages I don’t understand.
Besides the free entertainment there is one really cool thing: I can receive several network news RAW Feeds.. The news and video directly from cameras and reporters in the field, before the producers and talking head anchors make their little edits and changes to fit their agenda. .
As long as the dish is 1 meter or less ( which will probably exclude most C band ), the homeowners association can screw themselves. Federal law supercedes any homeowners association agreements ( unless you live in a designated historic district). 47 CFR § 1.4000:
(a)(1) Any restriction, including but not limited to any state or local law or regulation ... or any private covenant, homeowners' association rule or similar restriction on property within the exclusive use or control of the antenna user where the user has a direct or indirect ownership interest in the property, that impairs the maintenance, installation, or use of ...
(i) an antenna that is designed to receive direct broadcast satellite service, including direct-to-home satellite services, that is one meter or less in diameter ...
(ii) an antenna that is designed to receive video programming services via multipoint distribution services ... and is one meter or less in diameter or diagonal measurement ...
(iii) an antenna that is designed to receive television broadcast signals; or
(iv) a mast supporting an antenna described in [the above paragraphs]; is prohibited to the extent it so impairs.