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Digital TV is a little different over there.
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I sure hope so - if your digital TV is as bad as ours then you have my sympathies!
Based on ancient MPEG2 technology, it started as a commercial pay-for service (OnDigital). The transmisisons were scrambled and there was a monthly subscription - I was one of the first! The picture quality was pretty good.
They went bust but were bought up by ITV ("ITV digital"), still pay-for. Went bust.
After maybe 6 months it arose pheonix-like as Freeview which is the current system. Its called "Free"view because only some of the channels are pay-to-view (such as UK Gold, which broadcasts a lot of the classic BBC programmes my licence fee paid for but now I'd have to pay even more to see
). The bit-rate has dropped and dropped as more channels have been crammed in (stations need to pay their own licence fee which ultimately ends up in the government coffers), and now that "HD" is being broadcast they've robbed the standard def channels of even more bandwidth, to such an extent that some channels are barely watchable - seriously, massive artifacts in fast moving scenes. But at least HD is MPEG4 and I wouldn't be shocked if in a few year the SD channels changed so people will have to buy new equipment yet again. Having said that, I've seen BBC HD and was not impressed - lacking detail and with different parts of a stationary scene changing position relative to each other all symptomatic of poor bitrate/encoder. Yet HD is being pushed when we aren't even getting the quality of SD; some channels transmit the picture as 540x576 (which stretches to widescreen) ... if you do the maths, even if the transmission were uncompressed then the bandwidth would be about the same as the 1936 405-line signal ! Now add a lot of compression on top of that and, well, you get the gist.
Sis + parent in Bristol (southern England) are now digital only, whilst here in Birmingham (central england) we are dual analogue digital but switchover is pending. This is accompanied by many propaganda adverts, how "digital is easier", accompanied by some old footage (50's?) of TV sets on a production line being set up by a boffin. However, my ma could tune an old telly - you turned the little dial til you saw the picture you want - but just can't cope with the multi-menu techy digital stuff which needs regular re-tuning as they keep fiddling with the channels - drives her mad as this usually means BBC1 switches to the Welsh language version!
Digital radio is also messed up, using an antiquated technology (MP2). The bandwidth has dropped and dropped (64Kb/s for rock music - and remember MP2 is no where near as good as MP3). In fact, to get a decent digital radio quality you have to pick it up on via Freeview which also receives some digital radio stations. For example BBC Radio 7, which broadcasts a lot of radio comedy, is 80Kb/s mono on radio but 256kb/s stereo on the TV set top box. Bizarre.
TTFN,
Jon