Satellite requires an unobstructed view of the southern sky. There is no reason that the dish needs to be mounted on the house. So you may be able to mount it at some point away from the house but at some distance I would imagine you would need a signal booster which means electricity.

There is always "over the air" (OTA) but the number of channels is generally a function of your proximity to a metro area and you're limited to the major networks and PBS. There's a website that allows you to plug in your address and it will tell you what channels area available and what kind of antenna you need to receive them.

Of course, there's the local cable company (if they go to your house) and the telcos. The latter is generally a function of distance. Most have some kind of online tool that will tell you what they offer based on your location.

When we built our home there was no cable on the road, so we had DirecTV installed. The dish is out in the back so the signal clears some pretty tall pines. And I'm happy with it.
Comcast ran a cable a few years ago and we passed on having it installed.

Now there are all kinds of modern internet based companies like HULU, etc, but I don't want to wait a day or so to watch a show, and I like local news and especially weather. I wanna know when the winter blizzards are coming so I can get the firewood in because we KNOW we're gonna lose power.

We attached coaxial cable to the tv, and ran it to an antenna in the attic.

Roku

Try digital antennas, you will receive some cable channels if you use it.

Contact the local cable company unless you are in an area that only has dish's. We have both cable and dish/satellite companies along with phone companies to add channels on the tv.

The original post is confusing as cable and satellite which are two different methods to received tv channels.

OP cannot use dish. too many trees.
they can get tv via cable service.
they can use antenna for local OTA service.
centurylink has their prism service which is fiber optic?
but very few locations.

pauL4645 said: "Try digital antennas, you will receive some cable channels if you use it."

How does that work?

I think we got DSL (I should be keeping better records LOL). Looking at our bill it doesn't say what we got, but we certainily don't have a dish on our roof). If it helps we get our service thru Frontier (CT, USA). We are happy with the reliable service, although the price of $58.00 p/month just for internet i feel is kind of steep

I didn't want a dish because our neighbor complained about it in inclimate weather. No big trees in our area. I think, big cloud cover and/or the ion sphere interferes with transmission

If you're here, you must have the Internet, and I assume you will at your new place, too. You can watch T.V. on the Internet, but you can't use the Internet on T.V. So why pay for both? I don't. Netflix's basic package is less than $20 per month.

Whammytap, in my own case I haven't had tv reception in years because I refuse to pay the exhorbitant fees that either cable or dish charge. In my case I don't miss it, but since others do -- I do note when I wanted to watch the very few sporting events I like (Olympics, NCAA basketball -- that's it for me) one cannot watch that type of TV on the Internet without a TV subscription of some sort. On the other paw though, I get plenty of news, even local, via the Internet (and the radio). I even still subscribe (but not for much longer due to house-building budget constraints) to a paper newspaper that I have delivered on weekends.

We got rid of our cable several years ago and got a ROKU box https://www.roku.com/. We now get most of our programming from Netflix or Amazon ($8.00/mo ea.) and also have an external antenna to receive over the air broadcasts (about 15 channels in our area). We have pleanty to watch and don't miss cable at all.

whammytap - not everyone can do as you suggest. You probably live somewhere where you have faster internet. We can only get DSL at a speed of up to 3 Mbps. That doesn't real work for streaming. But we are luckier than others in our county who cannot get internet at their house at all unless they can get a satellite to work.

So while we would love to do as EP Visualz did, it is not possible here. We are hoping it will be in the future. We do have the external antenna and usually the reception is not bad.

Good point. I should remember from my travels across the American Southwest that high-speed Internet isn't available everywhere. Also good point about sports--I don't follow them so I didn't think of that. Guess I don't have much to offer then, but I hope y'all find a solution that works! :)

My husband can't live without his ESPN. Is there another option for him to watch his precious IOWA STATE without having Dish Network?