My dad recently (bout 2 months ago) bought an emerson 32(i think) inch lcd 720p TV from the local walmart for just under 600 bux, too it home and out of the box looked like every lcd you see on display-color ramped up, contrast off the chart. me and him fooled with it for about 5 minutes (he and i have the same idea about how a tv looks good to us so i ran the remote and he made suggections as to where to set the lttle bar graph charts) and i have to say the thing looks good, and even thow its not 1080, the 720 with HD programing is quite impressive. he's happy as a clam with the set, and so far so good. So i can back up the good picture for the money claim as long as you have the patience to get through the menus and adjust the picture.

For the people in rural areas, I think C-band satelite may be your best hope for a picture. C-band is still free (for network channels anyway) and those receivers can go with either analog or digital connections.

I happen to live in a big metro area yet I can not get digital signals very well at all at this point, mostly because of the UHF numbers they are on. And thats after I put up a huge 10' antenna pole on my rooftop. This does not inspire my confidence in digital reception at all.

So I am going to keep my C-band dish around a few more years atleast.

It will be very interesting to see what analog television prices go for on ebay after the conversion is complete. I suspect the market will tell us very quickly how well this works out.

Using my converter boxes, I receive the HDTV channel that I watch the most, channel 36, fairly well with amplified rabbit ears. I am around 30 miles from the transmitters. I also get the other UHF channels fairly well with careful antennal placement. The one that I cannot get is the only VHF channel we have hear, channel 7. This is kind of funny as it is the strongest analog channel we have.

I am taking the converter box to my mothers place in rural Oklahoma when I visit her next month to see if I can receive anything. I suspect not as her external antenna is in bad shape at present and her analog reception is poor.

My brother has arranged for her to have satellite(with local channels) and she has a weather radio, so receiving broadcast TV is not a priority for her at present.

I'm 55 miles from 4 digital stations broadcasting out of South Bend Indiana. I can receive their analog counterparts fuzzy with a handheld Sony watchman. With a 20-element yagi with reflectors mounted on a pole outside I get them clear as a bell. Not a peep from the digital stations. I'm 12 Miles from the 4 Fort Wayne Indiana digital stations. Analog counterparts are clear always, of course. Digital will get "blocky" and drop out at the least provocation. Digital is clearly "urban". Most audience for the least effort is good enough I guess -- now we're back to my "pride in your work" rant...

I used to stay up late and DX as a kid. Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Dayton, Lima, Cincy, Louisville, Indy, Muncie, Terre Haute, South Bend, Chicago were usually reachable. Sometimes a treat would drop out of the sky, like Lexington or Windsor or some such. That was back before every station played the same thing, so you'd always get some local surprise. Kept me off the streets.

I don't believe there will be any DXing with digital TV. Like others have said, it's all or nothing. My nearest neighbor and "easy get" South Bend has never been anything but "nothing". No chance of Chicago or Indy.

Glad there's still AM radio...

Here is one site with digital TV DX pictures, some from 300 miles away. Notice one thing... Except for one picture, They are all crystal clear! Try that with analog TV DX. :)

http://fmdx.usclargo.com/dtv.html

There are many more sites with digital TV DX, and some video sites as well.

Digital TV reception will get much better when the TV stations get off their butts and shut off the analog transmitters, then run full power digital signals.

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I'm skeptical of a single-source anecdotal report. If 300 miles is reachable with a rooftop antenna -- well I should get 50 or 70 channels from my tower. I'll let you guys know in 2009.

Unless the "rooftop antenna" was mounted on the roof of his Cessna 150...

You joke about the Cessna. However, RCA had an ad in the late 1950s about how their portable TVs were "Jet tested". The TVs were loaded into a jet plane and operated as it was flying over the tower. Of course, they should have operated fine as the tower was less than 6 miles away.

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My 45" Sharp Aquos LCD has a dynamic bar graph signal strength meter built in as part of the on-screen Setup menu. A minimal 60-65% strength typically produces a picture, although at that low end there is occasional picture pixelation and freezing as the tuner strives to reacquire the signal. Anything above 75% is clear as a bell.

Even in the station's market, if their broadcast tower is being buffeted by a windy day, the antenna at the top can bounce back and forth by a substantial fraction of the wavelength of their channel carrier frequency. Digital TV does have some echo (ghost) cancellation references but it does have limits. Depending on how the ghosts are where you live, you could get momentary failures as ghost strengths and phasing changes as the tower moves in the wind. And things may get to be more fun as DX, but maybe not, the ghosts may get weak enough to not be an issue...

I live at least 70 miles away from the nearest station I receive if you don't count the local UHF station that's fed off a crappy microwave connection from another station that's nearly 100 miles away. With my rather large Channel Master VHF only antenna with a mast mounted amplifier I receive 2 stations Channel 8 and Channel 12 crystal clear, above the VHF antenna is a UHF antenna that's yagi about 5 ft long with a corner reflector and also goes through a mast mounted amplifier, I use RG-6 coax. These antennas are on top of a 40 ft mast and I live on a hill on fairly high terrain for this area. My UHF reception from stations in the same locations as the VHF stations is very marginal.

I went out on some of the websites mentioned in the thread and followed some links where I found a few signal contour maps. Somewhere I've read that I'll need to be in an area where I'll be able to receive at least a -60 db signal strength to receive digital TV. This area shows that the digital UHF stations that are associated with my present VHF stations are putting about -125 db in this area, me thinks over the air will go away for me Feb 2009.