Interesting article on the vagaries of DTV ATSC reception which sums up the death of fringe reception. People should also know that it is only slightly better with QAM: same sound dropouts and intermittent pixelation - essentially, instead of a slight fuzzy picture spell or minor sound distortion, it's 1-2sec sound gaps and chronic pixelation when the signal gets below about 50%. Then there's the TVs - I treated myself to a LCDTV a few months ago... which initially blew me away but as those things go, I'm now at the stage of wondering how to get this fragile monster to quit annoying me... and I'm not alone. Yes, I've spent weeks combing the AVSForum for fellow sufferers and there are many. So, besides the broadcast medium, the new DTVs can aggravate the experience. They are, of course, controlled by software, apparently, based on a peek at a firmware update, running on a Linux variant for the main controller and as we all know, all software has bugs. Trouble is, by the time the bugs should be fixed there's a whole slew of new models to be umm, tended... with new bugs. With my set, there always seems to be one of the QAM channels which causes it to reboot & restart: yes, it powers off and auto-powers back on and since it hits the same channel it cycles, until I manage to catch it with a channel change at just the right moment, which is not easy. I don't think the story you referenced is over-dramatic at all. There's going to a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, come next February.