If you search the archives, I've long been a vocal opponent to the DTV cutover - in my area, now that the cutover is partially complete, I've got only 3 stations - CBS out of Philly, and a terrible local station and a PBS affiliate. Reception is spotty with a large outdoor antenna and is simply impossible with a portable antenna.

It's not just fringe areas. The place where I get my hair cut is in Manhattan, and they have an older television with a converter box and rabbit ears. The signal stalls, cuts out, pixellates and generally is unreliable.

After June when the full cutover happens, we'll see just how bad this debacle is.

To the others who suggest the Hauppauge or Pinacle USB stick - that's what I use, as I don't own a television. We use a laptop computer for the 3 times a year we need/want to see live television. The rest of the time it's hulu.com or DVD's from Netflix.

HD Radio is not the same as digital television audio and I've been experimenting with that too, via rental cars when I travel for business. In a word: meh. I didn't find anything that spectacular in HD radio, the usability of the channelization plan leaves a lot to be desired. In many ways it's silly that they attempted to keep the archaic "frequency" nomenclature of old radio instead of using the "Channel" metaphor like XM/Sirius or plain old television.

As far as signal quality and features for HD radio, it wasn't really that big a deal as far as I could tell. Certainly better audio quality for AM stations, but the signal does not have the reach of the old analog systems and like all digital signals, you can't lose some of the signal without losing all of it.

All in all, it's a case where newer is definitely not actually better. Unlike the conversion of cell phone service to digital, which brought a lot of improvements, the conversion of broadcast services to digital has been very poorly executed.