2009 HDTV conversion.

[ChrisW6ATV]

The coupon-eligible tuners will work fine for trying out reception with an antenna.

It is important to know that not all digital TV is on the UHF band today, and even in cities where all current DTV stations are UHF, that could change. Therefore, antennas marked "HDTV", which are probably mostly or all UHF-only, are less suitable than others for DTV use. Any good outdoor VHF/UHF antenna will work well for digital TV, depending of course on how well you receive analog TV with the same antenna today. I would never recommend to anyone that they try to receive TV signals (analog or digital) with an indoor antenna; many people do, of course (and many have no choice but to try indoor antennas), but they should consider it luck and not anything to depend on now or in the future.

The coupon program has two phases. Phase one makes (I think) 11 million coupons available to everyone; if/when those run out, phase two will have another 11 million(?) coupons, but those will only be available to people who have not subscribed to cable or satellite TV for some time period before requesting the coupons.