After all was said and done, the DTV was hardly worth the effort. I spent HOURS messing with the system, trying to get something like stable reception on the DTV signal.
I think you are running into either:
(1) Your digital stations are broadcasting at low power, not full power (many are doing this now - call the station and ask them, they'll tell you).
(2) You have the wrong type of antenna (A VHF model when you may need a UHF one). You may also need an amplifier today if your stations are broadcasting at low power.
(3) Your digital tuners - both in the the PC card and the digital converter box - are not very good. Many of the digital converter boxes are indeed junk. Rushed to market at cheap prices. You might look at the "DTVPal" made by Echostar/DishNework. It is brand new and getting very good reviews.
I have found that there really is no "fringe" reception at all. With the NTSC setup, I could get and live with a snowy, ghosty analog image and still get something understandable out of it.
This is true. You are evidently running into what is commonly called "the digital cliff". Either you have a great picture, or you don't have any picture. There is a very small window right near that cutoff where you will see pixelation, noise, and things cutting in and out. If your stations are broadcasting their digital signals at low power, the cliff may be closer to you than you'd like. But this will probably change at the analog-digital changeover date. Many stations are using temporary digital transmitters and small antennas today, and are ramping up their higher power transmitters and better antennas for the changeover date.
That's really frustrating - when a DTV channel that was showing a 48% signal on Tuesday simply vanishes on Wednesday.
It's not the signal that disappeared (except if the transmitter broke - unlikely). It's your tuners ability to lock onto the signal. A very small deviation in the signal may throw your tuner over the cliff where it can't lock the signal.
With the old analog rig, I could point the antenna in the general direction of a major city and be sure to get signals on a number of channels. With digital, not only do I need a higher antenna, I need to aim it far more specifically, and even then, I found it to be unreliable.
Are you using a VHF antenna trying to pick up digital channels that are temporarily being broadcast on UHF? (and mapped down to lower channel numbers that appear to be VHF via PSIP). You have to have the correct type of antenna, and an antenna with enough gain to pick up the signal (which, as I've said before, is probably being broadcast at very low power temporarily).
NTSC was flawed, indeed, but the market didn't cry out for something better, this change was forced. I don't think most people care for how the signal looks. Look at the dismal sales of Blu-Ray vs. upconverted standard DVD - look at all the wide-screens you see making 4:3 NTSC fill a 16:9 screen - nobody cares.
You are confusing HDTV (high definition TV) and DTV (digital TV). These are two separate things. There is no mandate for stations to go HD, only for them to go digital. There is still tons and tons of standard definition programming being broadcast digitally. This will continue after the analog cutoff date.
If your comment on "most people don't care for how the signal looks" is supposed to go along with your second comment about stretching a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 16:9 one (I can't tell from your working), for the most part this distortion is caused by people who are ignorant of how to work their TVs. But not always. There are some TV stations that are notorious for actually broadcasting stuff in "stretch-o-vision". They do this because to many ignorant people, "short, fat characters" on the screen equal high definition. Not at all. It only means "distorted aspect ratio". I certainly don't set my TV to intentionally distort the picture, and if I run across a show that is actually being broadcast in stretch-o-vision, I move on to a different channel.
Did I mention ATSC does not work when mobile? Yeah, that's not in the spec.
This has to do with the need for the receiver to sample the digital signal at specific intervals. If the receiver is moving quickly, this is difficult. Think of a car honking the horn while it first drives towards you, then past you - the frequency that the horn is broadcasting does not change, but it appears to get lower in frequency to your ear as you are passed because of the Doppler Effect. New broadcast specs, which are backwards compatible with existing tuners, are starting to overcome this limitation.
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