> if you get a strong signal, quality will often be better than cable or satellite <
That’s true. I’ve read that’s because cable signals are compressed. But over-the-air signals are not.
Old cable guy here...
When you get a signal off air, it is as clean as it will be.
Shove that through a few miles of copper and it loses some of its mph. It’s gotten better with fiber and digitized systems. But it still gets degraded.