Except that when going to a NTSC television, the full quality of a DVD can never be realized. Thus they ended up nearly the same effectiveness. It was much better then VHS, however.

I attempted to move to ATSC DTV back in May. I used to get some stations perfectly clear all the time, and others might have some loss of sharpness or echoes but still had perfect audio and were always watchable. If I took the time to tune the antennae I could get almost all of them in clear with no loss. Since installing my converter box, television has become useless to me. Even the strongest channels result in corruption, screen blanking, and even worse complete loss of audio. Thus, I effectively am now unable to watch TV without becoming seriously annoyed. I currently live in an apartment, so I am unable to install an outdoor yagi style antenna. Although, judging from my parents who live closer to their transmitter and have a nice yagi antenna it won't help in poor weather as they still get drop outs. The antennae I currently use is indoor amplified VHF/UHF combo. Yes I could get cable. However, I should not have to pay for cable. Television has an official designation of it is to inform the public. Fundamentally, going with cable would mean I'm being charged for something that I should be free (and did in the past). Furthermore, 99% of the cable systems I've seen have poorer analog quality then I used to get with my antenna. My parents would get pictures that rival the best of DVD's or digital cable. Hurricane Katrina also taught me, that you can still get a lot of information from a signal that is extremely snowy since the images are still discernible and the audio clear enough. Since we were staying in a rural area, I can only imagine that many of these people would not be able to receive any information other then by AM/FM radio in the future. As far as I'm concerned, we are getting an inferior technology forced upon us. The standard should have allowed signals to be viewable for longer ranges and with no loss in audio (or at least degraded audio). Also, don't tell me their is the internet and newspaper. I have both. In fact, I'm also a licensed HAM. There are some things that TV is extremely good at, that no other technology comes close. Think of the recent question posed about the inauguration of President Obama.