Like I said, it expands the amount of data lost when corruption does happen. You can't have 1 bit off. And, due to the nature of interference, it's generally

Like I said, it expands the amount of data lost when corruption does happen. You can't have 1 bit off. And, due to the nature of interference, it's generally a block of bytes that end up corrupted. Encrypted pay tv exists (in the form of satellite transmissions) but there, interference is minimized by having a geosynchronous satellite high in the air directly beaming a signal. Only bad weather interferes. Further, because it's being beamed from a single source (rather than multiple towers around an area). you can point your dish directly at the satellite to get a relatively perfect directional connection. Other signals, the sun, power lines, etc don't generally interfere because you are concentrating a focused signal. That math all changes when talking about receiving multiple terrestrial signals with a non-directional antenna. If you've watched satellite tv, you know that whenever a storm rolls through it becomes unwatchable. There's not really any sort of graceful degradation, it's either a perfect signal or a blank screen with "no signal". SOMETIMES you might see giant swaths of green blocks or whatever if the corruption is just right, but generally speaking it's all or nothing. Meanwhile, I get relatively weak signals from a couple of weak OTA stations. For the most part, the images are perfectly passable.