[Jeffhs]

I believe OTA DTV reception will improve once the stations are all transmitting at full power. The reason a lot of folks are having trouble getting certain digital stations OTA (aside from distance or terrain issues) is that many of those stations are presently transmitting at somewhat less than their full authorized power level.

Zenithfan1: I did not realize that something as simple as birds sitting on an outdoor TV antenna could wreck DTV reception until I saw your post. As we know, this won't do much if anything to analog OTA reception, but I guess digital is a lot more fussy than analog ever was; witness the "all or nothing" nature of the former. I remember when the cable system here (Time Warner) converted to 100 percent digital last year. I was watching the evening news on my RCA CTC185 19" set shortly after the conversion was completed (or maybe it was still in progress) and saw the picture freezing and pixelating like crazy--I didn't see the end of that night's news because of the problem. I recently spoke with a technician for TW who told me that yes, they did have their share of problems at first, but that's part of the process of transitioning from one technology to another--there will always be bugs to be ironed out.