"Off-Air" refers to the broadcast signals for your local channels that you can pick up with an antenna that are sent through the air via air broadcast. So "off-air" refers to those signals. (Not avery good name for those signals, but that is what someone somewhere decided to call them and it stuck.) Most of the better satellite receiver/tuner boxes have a connector for another piece of coax to accept the input for an antenna so you can watch your local channels. If you have a HD tuner box that has this off-air input, it will feed those channels that are broadcast right to the TV seamlessly with the standard satellite channels. So when you go to your guide, you will see these "off-air" channels right along with your satellite channels. If you have a DVR, you can record those off-air channels as well as the satellite channels. At least that is how the current Dish Network HD DVR boxes work. I would assume the Direct TV is about the same. (Although I don't like their menu system interface as well, but this is just a personal preference thing.) The other really cool thing is most of the digital broadcast channels also send the program info (show rating, brief synopsis, etc.) so you can also see this in the menu when surfing around. It truly is seamless.
Prior to Satellite tuners having the off-air tuner built in, you would have to run the off-air signal directly to your TV/entertainment system and then jump back and forth between inputs on the TV or entertainment system and choose whether you wanted to view the satellite or antenna. It was a nusance. The current dual tuner boxes with seamless integration is leaps and bounds better.
That's the long and the short of "off-air" when used with HD satellite tuners.
Originally Posted by Peter Stahl
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