If you have cable or satellite TV, there is no need to be concerned about the digital changeover in 2009. Cable companies are spending millions of dollars upgrading their systems for the new standards (Comcast and Time Warner, to name but two major cable operators, are already carrying digital channels and have digital converter boxes with DVR and all the other bells and whistles, including On Demand), so when "HD-Day" (as I call the day the standards change) comes there will be no cause for worry. Of course, your present analog TV won't show the digital broadcasts in HD (your screen will show the picture in letterbox format), but at least you'll still be able to see your area's local channels when their analog signals are discontinued. I am considering very seriously having my own cable service downgraded to basic (local channels only) in 2009, getting other programming, including movies, on DVD. I've had a subscription to Netflix for almost two years now; those DVDs are often the only TV shows I watch these days except for news and sports.
Another alternative is the Internet. Many TV shows (including NBC and ABC nightly news broadcasts and others at the networks' own websites) are being streamed over the Web these days; there are also sites such as TorrentSpy (
www.torrentspy.com), TV Central (
www.tv.org), et al. that offer downloadable TV series. I have a lifetime membership to tv.org and also have bookmarked TorrentSpy and Mininova.org (two popular torrent sites), as well as AOL's in2TV. Watched an old episode of the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back Kotter on AOL's In2TV service last night; it was just as funny as when the shows were new 30 years ago. A plus: no commercials to interrupt the programs, but there are pauses and the inevitable ad banners at the bottom or sides of the screen; oh well, so-called "free" Internet services have to support themselves somehow. There is no free lunch, as the expression goes.