[Jeffhs]

I have the same problem. I live 35-40 miles from all seven Cleveland TV stations and can receive most of them using just an amplified indoor antenna. The two I don't get, however, are channels 8 and 19, FOX and CBS from Cleveland. I have been told this is due to my location, near Lake Erie; because of it, I would need a VHF-high band/UHF outdoor antenna to receive all seven local stations. Using my Roku player, however, I can get all seven channels just fine; the only thing is I must have a cable account with Time Warner/Spectrum (which I do), otherwise my player's Spectrum TV application will not receive the local channels.

Is cable TV available where your friend lives? It seems that would be the best bet, if she is not able to receive network stations on her TV with an antenna. If her apartment building has steel beams or other large amounts of metal (walls, etc.), this could be shielding her TV antenna from receiving any of the local stations. If she can get some random DTV stations, however, the indoor DTV antenna is working, just not well enough. Her apartment may just be facing the wrong direction from the Columbus stations' towers. Remember, DTV signals are weaker than analog ones were, and digital signals are very directional; further, there will be spots digital TV signals will be stronger than in others, and there will be "dead spots" where there is no signal at all.

The new ATSC 3.0 DTV standard, when (not if) it is enacted, will cause more problems, as noted in Zenith26kc20's post; however, this will affect only OTA reception. Cable should not be affected in any way, as cable operators will upgrade their equipment as necessary for the new standard. Streaming video should not be affected either, the reason being that all streaming video players (Roku, Google TV, et al.) receive video streams over the Internet, not OTA. I have had a Roku player for over a year, and have had no problems receiving any of my area's local TV stations; moreover, I don't anticipate any such problems, now or in the foreseeable future. As a nice bonus, my TV picture on every channel looks much better coming from the Internet (online) to my television, through an HDMI cable, than it ever looked on cable; the reason for this is because the Roku player picks up the unmodified video stream directly from the Internet, whereas cable signals are unmercifully compressed and otherwise butchered on their way from the headend to the viewer's TV, probably to enable the cable companies to put more and more channels on their systems.