In my opinion, a large part of the "DTV problem" is the fact that so many TV stations are changing the RF channel for their broadcast. Many are changing tower locations and antenna elevations as well. These stations decided to keep this information essentially to themselves. Their feeling was that the new tuners will find them - after all it's all automatic. And the coverage prediction maps made them "feel good" because most of the time the contours were very similar. Big mistake on their part.
However, we hams all know that different bands (VHF vs. UHF) propigate differently, especially when there are hills. Today's general public doesn't typically understand much of this, nor do many of them care - until their favorite channel goes away. Then there's the problem of digital's "all or nothing" reception. As we all know, with analog, the picture can get fairly bad, but the viewer can still watch it. With digital, a little bit of noise (maybe a snowmobile going by) and the signal just goes away. And it doesn't take a whole lot to experience drop outs. My wife sees every one of those pixilations, freezes and audio drops outs and proclaims "I hate this new TV." Give her an analog picture and she'd be happy watching snow. Go figure. >From what I've read, much of Europe utilizes a different DTV format than North America, and it sounds like it works better. That figures, doesn't it? Those are my observations anyway. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, you're probably going to pay for a dish or cable. I've been watching DVT for almost two years now. I'm disappointed to see all the problems and confusion, but I'm not at all surprised. Chuck
