Converting High-def to low-def, does it work?

I live alone, and I had planned, rather than buy several high def tv's
in 2009, to buy one converter which I will put where my VCR is, and
use it to pipe low-def signals to all the tv's in the house.**

I have been told that the converters which will be offered for sale in
2009 will output low-def tv signals that are not as good as what we
have today, that the picture will look worse than it does now, or that
it won't fill the screen, or both, or worse.

Can you fill me in on the facts?

Thanks.


**(I do that now with video tapes or VCR tuner output. I have a
couple amplifiers, basically for every second splitter in a row, I
have an amplifier, and everything works fine)

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