You obviously have not seen this website.
http://pages.cthome.net/fmdx/hdtv.html Admittedly he has a radical antenna
setup mounted way up high, but the digital channels can have pretty well all
the range of the analog ones. Especially considering that many of the
digital broadcasters right now are not operating at full power, and probably
even more so a year or two ago when this website was first put up and many
of these captures were made. Here in Evansville, Indiana, I am able to
receive CBS, NBC, ABC, several PBS's, and Fox in digital using only an RCA
omni-directional "garbage can lid" antenna mounted in my attic. By
contrast, the analog channels are almost unwatchable with the exact same
antenna due to multipath, etc.

Having said all that, I agree with the posts about the broadcasters
eventually going more for quantity than quality. They can keep compressing
the digital signals to where they will get so poor that all the viewer will
be able to make out will be the toll free numbers on the 24 hour a day
infomercials. But for right now, the picture quality is surprisingly good.

Lee Richardson
Mech-Tech
Evansville, Indiana


And there are disadvantages. For example, dx'ing will become near to
impossible. Many of a station's audience lives out in rural areas
without cable. A digital system is all or nothing without anything
inbetween. In a rural setting a little snow in an analog signal isn't
a big problem. However, a picture full of frozen squares or a blue
screen is going to be a bitch to watch. No more tv for those folks.
Satellite doesn't work so great in the fog or rain either.