Many of the commercials state that if you don't buy a converter or have cable or satellite, your television will stop working. They even show pictures of television sets used as planters and recylce bins.
In one respect their statement is true. Your television will not work in the sense that it will have no signal to receive. However, it does still work.
Don't let anyone make you believe that you have to rush out and buy a new television before February 2009. If you have cable or satellite, you are good to go and won't have any interuption in your entertainment. If you use an external antenna or "rabbit ears", then you will need to get one of the digital converter boxes. You can get a coupon for here (2 per household).
I personally use an over-the-air antenna to receive my local channels. I will warn you that you will likely receive a better signal if you have an external antenna on top of your house. It really depends on the area where you live.
I live in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm about 30 miles from the transmission towers and I have buildings and hills between us. Not to mention, I live on a high-traffic road with alot of trucks and other vehicles that cause signal disruption. I have an HD reciever attached to my HD TV set.
Using an amplified indoor antenna, I can only receive a few of the channels (Fox, NBC, CBS, PBS) somewhat clearly, but there is still interference and constant signal drop. I cannot receive ABC, CW or any of the other local channels currently broadcasting in HD. Their signals are not strong enough for me to receive under the current conditions.
When I lived in Austin, I did not have this problem. I was only about 10 miles from the transmission towers and picked up all of the station without any signal loss using the indoor antenna.
"Why don't you switch to cable or satellite?" I hear you say.
Well, there are a couple of reasons:
Cable: The cost of cable is outrageous for the service you recieve. They charge you an arm and a leg for anything above basic. Then there are all the fees that are tacked on. By the time they are done, you are paying 80$ or more for very little. Add to that, when they say they have HD available, they are not exactly being truthful. Yes, they are transmitting an HD signal, but it is compressed quite a bit because they have limited bandwidth in which to transmit it.
Satellite: Satellite is slightly better price-wise. They don't have all of the extra fees that cable does. The only problem is that they want (in most cases) to charge you extra for HD service. While that may have been fine when HD was just coming out, it's ridiculous now that most all stations are available in HD anyway. And, like with cable the HD signal is actually compressed for broadcast. It's not compressed as much as cable, so the quality is considerably better.
Of course, as it stands now, the only true HD you can receive is over-the-air. The signal is not compressed and the audio and video are truly outstanding. Colors are extremely vivid. On some sets I've seen, it looks as if you are looking through a window at what is happening.
The only drawback is that most over-the-air broadcasters aren't fully utilizing HD. Now they have the ability to broadcast sub-channels to their regualr programming. Some use their sub-channels to air a 24hr weather radar (boring!). Some actually use it to broadcast educational / children's programming or additional network programming. One of the local networks uses on of their sub-channels to broadcast music videos. The choices are endless.
Unfortunately, it is, as I said under-utilized.
As for your TV, you will get a really good picture with a digital converter box if you don't have cable or satellite. If you want to get a better picture, you can upgrade to an HD TV set. But, the choice is yours. Don't let anyone fool you into buying a new TV you don't need or subscribing to cable or satellite unless you want to.
My rule of thumb is to wait. Usually within a year or two of new technolgy being released, they find a way to improve it and offer it at a lower price. Look at DVD and BluRay. That's one I'll be waiting on for a while too.
If you're interested in getting satellite for your HD experience click on the banner below.
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