jds, you make an excellent point about the transition of broadcast TV to digital-only. When that time comes, though, I'm hoping that there will be inexpensive portable radios that will also pick up the new digital signals. However, I'm not holding my breath. Digital HD radio transmissions have been available for a while now, and the prices on the few models available are still very high. There will probably even be less demand for inexpensive digital TV receivers when the analog signals are finally turned off, so I'm not hopeful that affordable options will be available then.

I have thought about getting a scanner. I'm no expert on this topic and have never been into scanning before, but my area has a county-wide 800 Mhz digital trunked system. I don't think it's fully implemented countywide yet so there are still some agencies using analog, but at least in my immediate area, all law enforcement channels are encrypted, so that greatly limits a scanner's usefuless for me. Besides, just in general, the cost of scanners required for such a system seemed too high for me when I last did some research into it. I'm not even sure if scanners that can work on this particular system are available to the public.