Yes, the $500-ish price range that most of the Digital Scanners seem to have, makes me hesitant to take the plunge.

Does anyone know if these "national interoperability plans" will also involve some sort of encryption or "scrambling" of the communications? I would sure hate to spend the bucks for a digital scanner, and find out that it quickly becomes useless because the various agencies also start to use encryption that would "lock out" civilians.