It's really pretty simple. If you have an analog TV and rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna and watch only the over-the-air broadcasts from your local TV stations, then all you need to do is add a digital converter box between the antenna and the television set. The digital converter box replaces the built-in analog tuner in your television set. So, obviously, you'd need one converter box per television set, even if you use a single rooftop analog antenna for reception.
Whatever antenna you currently use for analog can still be used for digital (you do not need to go out and buy some marketing hype "Digital Ready!" antenna). Generally, you won't get any better, or any worse, reception after adding the converter box than you do now. If you get crappy reception via your rabbit ears now, you'll get crappy digital reception after the conversion.
In some cases, marginal analog reception might be improved due to digital technology being able to reconstruct some of the missing data. Likewise, with some marginal analog signals, if there's not enough digital signal to recreate the picture on your TV, reception might be worse, even to the point where that "always snowy" channel might not come in at all. But for the most part, switching from analog to digital won't improve or degrade whatever you can get now.
DTV broadcasts aren't necessarily High Definition (HD), they are merely digital. Digital broadcasts include Standard Definition (SD, regular TV) and HD. You can watch SD and HD on a standard TV with a digital tuner. It just won't be in High Defintion. You need an HD television to watch HD programs in HD.
The digital converter boxes cost between $40 and $70. The federal gubmint (the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA, division of the Commerce Department) will give you (each household) up to two coupons of $40 each that can be redeemed at the time of purchase at an approved retail store for the purchase of a converter box. The coupons cannot be used towards the price of cable or satellite. The coupons will expire 90 days after the date of mailing.
The NTIA coupon program has reashed its funding limit. So if you don't already have a coupon or two, you're probably SOL. You can, however, apply for your coupons, and as any unused coupons out there begining to expire after their 90 days, those funds will go back into new coupons that will be sent out.
If you want and need coupons, and you don't already have them, what's wrong with you? Surveys show that about 75% of the people who will need converter boxes are unaware of the coupon program. To date, more than 25 million people have requested and received coupons. About half of those coupons have expired. I would imagine that many or most of those people decided to switch to cable or satellite. But there are about 30-40 million households in the US who do not have cable or satellite and will need a converter box. The NTIA is $330 million short on coupon money, and they've asked for more. They didn't anticipate the flood of people wanting coupons, even though only 25 million have been sent out. Excellent.
There's also a shortage of converter boxes. The concensus seems to be that we'll fall about 2.5 million box short. The more people who move to cable and satellite, or get digital-ready televisions, the less of a problem that will be. But the biggest problem is who really needs to converter boxes the most, and it's generally poor folks in poor neighborhoods (which is why it makes perfect sense to have the "approved" converter box retailers like Best Buy, Sears, Circuit City, Target, Walmart, Radio Shack, K-Mart, 'cause poor, urban neighborhoods are just flooded with these stores).
It's a combination of typically FUBAR'd government handling of the conversion and rollout (things are going insanely smooth in the UK with the same transition), and the complacency of many of the consumers who have failed to act before now, that is the reason behind the call for pushing back the drop-dead date on this thing. Congress would have to pass another law to push it back, and there's only 32 days left to get that done. I dunno. In any case, if the drop-dead date happens, those who have failed to act will suddenly find an urgency they never knew they had. That'll work.
Ever since cable first became available in the neighrbooh I lived in at the time, I've had cable, or now, satellite. I wouldn't want to go back to broadcast television. I need my 28 home shopping channels and 137 channels of infomercials at 3:00 in the morning.
Actually, cable and satellite is worth Robin Meade, if nothing else.
