I suppose it's rare to find me discussing television in a positive manner, so savor the moment. In preparation for next year's analog TV switchoff, I purchased an Insignia NS-DXA1 digital tuner at Best Buy today (with some financial aid from W, of course).
I get the idea that I don't give digital technologies as much credit as they deserve. Yes, sometimes they fall awry of their intended purpose and almost always are used to satisfy some purely monopolistic restriction. This year, though, I've transitioned to digital sources twice. The first occurred earlier this year when I switched from the AMPS cellular network to GSM, and some five months later I can say that I've been quite pleased with the change. Call clarity has been improved greatly, signal strength is amazing, improved modulation results in better battery life, and for the paranoia in all of us, calls are encrypted.
It comes as no surprise that digital TV shares a number of digital cellular service's improvements. Obviously, the most noticeable is the clear picture, which rivals that of Comcast's digital cable. Not too surprising, until you take into consideration that this is a wirelessly-distributed system, which is quite impressive. Antenna positioning is key: in analog you'll get snow, which can be acceptable, while in digital you get this. Ah, MPEG-2.
Anyway, I wrote a quick article reviewing the Insignia NS-DXA1 box over here, which details the installation process and some other things that can be expected of the switch.