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One thing I can say is that those converter boxes DO work very well. They function just like a cable box, or satellite receiver except they get the signal from a regular antenna.
If you're in an area with a strong signal the picture will look much better, even on an NTSC TV. It looks better than a DVD assuming the TV station isn't screwing up the signal before broadcasting it. There's absolutely no ghosting, snow, or color smear which is almost unavoidable on NTSC unless you're lucky.
It could improve the selection of tv programs because they can broadcast something like 4 or 6 NTSC resolution channels over one carrier instead of one HD signal. I'm pretty sure they will do this most of the time so they can get 4 or 6 times as many ads on the air and only switch to HD for prime time.
I won't get too excited until there's a way to time shift using a tape, or disc (not a PVR). They really don't want you to be able to record and save programs. There's a lot of technology to prevent unauthorized recording which may lead to people moving away from broadcast TV completely. I can see myself dumping cable, satellite and broadcast and just downloading the things I want to watch. You can already do this and it looks better than cable most of the time.
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