If only the world had accepted the British High Definition 1000 line analog full colour Stereo Baird TV technology standard in 1948 (yes HDTV in 1948), but instead we in the UK got the pre second WW11 425 line B/W (UK was essentially bankrupt in 1948 and couldn't afford its implementation, Oh how things change ) then the full colour 625 line PAL colour standard in 1967, which I guess would have already qualified as being somewhat Hi-def compared to the 525 line NTSC broadcast standard. The UK PAL broadcast system is being replaced by the DVB-T standard but is being rolled out slowly over a period of about 4 years.

Switching from Analog to a digital broadcast standard over the whole country the size of the USA on the same day does sound a bit mad though!!

Its your patriotic duty to accept the ATSC DTV, as I'm sure you wouldn't want to fall behind technologically with countries such as Iran, Morocco, Angola, Vietnam or Egypt.

If the DTV terrestrial broadcast signal is very weak, don't you have a free satellite broadcast such as the equivalent of the European DVB-S service which broadcasts the same channels you would have picked up using your UHF antenna.

As for the TV content in the UK, thank God for BBC (none of that Capitalist advertising every 15 minutes )!!