[ohohyodafarted]

The issue of leaving analog and moving to all digital is purely about the issue of bandwidth and picture quality. The airwaves are a very very valuable and finite comodity. The bandwidth must be used for many many many different purposes. The most economical way to do that is to use the latest technology to transmit the information in an encripted digital manner, and be able to send 10 or more times the information in the same bandwidth.

(BTW the government has every right to tell the public how the airwaves must be used. The FCC has been doing that since it was established. The airwaves are the property of the government. Every government has the right to control the airwaves over it own airspace. The various frequencies allocated to various things such as Television and Radio are only "licensed" to the TV and radio stations and if the stations do not comply with the mandates of the FCC the license to use a given frequency can be revoked.)

As for the $40 coupon the government will be issuing, I figure I pay taxes, and the money is mine to begin with. But the fact is that those coupons will be used mostly by poor people who can not afford to buy a new TV with a digital tuner.

AS for picture quality... I live within the shadow (less then 1/4 mile) of no less than 6, 1000+ foot tall tv transmission towers in Milwaukee. I emphasize the word SHADOW. I have lived here since 1951 and have had problems with signal overload, ghosting, and cross chanel interference since the beginning because I am so close and the transmissions either overload my tv sets or the signal is blocked because I am to close to the base of the towers.

I recently purchased a Phillips 42" LCD HDTV with ATSC digital tuning. I now, for the 1st time in over 50 years, can receive PERFECT picture quality on every station that is broadcasting in digital format. The same station's analog signals continue to give me very shitty picture quality.

AS far as artifacts on a digital tv, that is due to either a much to highly compressed signal (one with less information than needed to fill a given screen size) or a very crapy digital tv that does a poor job of processing the digital information. A good digital transmission containing a sufficient amount of picture information, shown on a quality digital TV will run rings around the clarity and sharpness of any analog tv you can produce.

I get most of my program material from the master broadcast signals via a digital C-band satelite dish. (not the highly compressed and shitty Direct TV pizza dish... I am talking about the Big 10 foot type dish). I get both High definition and Standard Definition program material from more than 20 satelites in the Clarke belt. I can assure you that there is nothing that compares to a true High Definition broadcast shown on a quality HDTV receiver.

I enjoy my collection of old tv sets. I even enjoy watching them for the sake of nostalgia. But I will be the first to admit that their picture quality can not hold a candle to todays technology.

With reapect to fringe area broadcasts, you should be able to pick up digital broadcasts with a basic UHF roof top antenna up to 50 miles away from most digital transmitters without any degradation in picture quality. (no degradation in picture quality is the big plus of digital transmissions)

AS for the black bars on the sides of your screen, If you have a HDTV like my Phillips, there is a feature that automatically sizes the incomming signal to fit the entire screen regardless of the transmited picture format. I have no black bars on any picture I watch. The picture is automatically resized to fit the full screen