And why it's a decade late is an uncomfortable object lesson for passionate defenders of laissez-faire capitalism. It was a classic free market stalemate: Manufacturers wouldn't build the HDTV receivers until broadcasters were sending out a signal the new sets could receive; and broadcasters wouldn't invest in completely making over everything from studio to transmitter until a significant part of the audience could receive digital signals. Nobody could blink first, for perfectly sound and rational economic reasons. God knows how much longer we'd have to wait if we'd "allowed the free-market to work" (as God and Nature intended).

Comcast upgraded me from analog to basic digital last week. No cost, and I should hope not, because they'd have to do it anyway on 2-18-2009, and by upgrading now they can phase out the expensive old analog junk in plenty of time for the deadline. It's mostly for their benefit. What I got was a slightly clearer picture at crappy old NTSC broadcast resolution, but no new channels. Oh, and I now can order pay-per-view and on-demand and send more money to Comcast. They should pay me for the upgrade...

That's about what you'd get with one of those converter boxes: Same low-resolution picture, but without the noise and jitter. What you want in the next couple of years is to get actual HDTV--it's worth it.

I have an HDTV receiver in my PC, and it picks up the same basic digital package off the cable, but at actual HDTV rez. Top o'the line 1920 x 1080p (packed into my 1600x1200 plasma) is positively beautiful!; photographic quality. Only the local NBC and PBS stations use it, far as I know. Some of the better local stations broadcast in the 1280x760 range, the rest slice up their allocation into lots of low-rez channels, which probably makes sense for the channels that mostly have old analog content to show anyway.

Yeah, cable sucks. Around 80 channels in the basic package, and I don't ever watch more than a dozen of them, including the five news channels. Next thing we need to do is get the regulators who watch over the cable monopoly franchises to break up the packages and let us order a la carte. "Bundling" like that is considered monopolistic and generally illegal in other industries, but somehow the cable companies get away with making us pay for 60 channels that we'd never in a million years ever watch. The government should do something to restore free choice in the marketplace! [slapping Tom across the face with the gloves and flinging them to the ground...]