What were people expecting?

DTV is a broadcast standard... NOT a content standard. If you didn't like what was on before, you certainly aren't going to like what's on afterwards.


And as far it goes it's a damn good broadcast standard. It makes the following possible:
* High-def quality (we currently lag behind the rest of the world in TV picture quality
* Discrete surround sound
* Multi-casting
* Interactive TV
* OPEN standard that can grow (unlike the 70 year old handcufffs we suffered from)

But it is not, and was never intended to be a content standard. In fact, if you think about it the quality of some content might go down! Broadcasters struggle with finding enough quality stuff to put on one station, certainly now that they can mulit-cast you can bet there will be some trash on the alternate channels.

But like all new technologies, some companies will rise to the top. Think about this as a possibility...

You are watching the local news on say channel 3. Well now you might watch channel 3.1 if you live in the west hills of the city or 3.3 if you live south. Why? Well 80% of the broadcast might be the same, but when they get to high school sports, or local weather, or community interest they can customize the content if they wish. This is just one example, but it speaks to the kinds of possibilities the DTV standard offers.

But in the end, it's a broadcast standard. It's up to the content providers and the business sense of the broadcasters which pieces of the standard they are going to take full advantage of... or simply do the minimum. Economics, not the standard is the bad guy here.