OTA uses the 8VSB modulation standard, which provides about 19 mbit&#x2F;sec of payload.<p>If your station is not broadcasting any subchannels it&#x27;s a VERY nice signal.  (It&#x27;s still compressed with MPEG-2, the raw bitrate of a 1080p video is over 1Gbit&#x2F;sec)<p>Unfortunately most channels in my market are sending 3-4 subchannels which knocks down the quality of the primary.  AFAIK only Fox broadcasts a single stream (and football looks pretty freaking great there).<p>Yes, the cable and dish operators recompress the MPEG-2 stream into whatever they are broadcasting and they do it at a lower quality to cram more channels into their pipe.