Why not get basic cable? I live in an apartment building as well and have the same problem with rabbit ears and standard analog NTSC signals; the UHF OTA reception is good for the most part, but VHF goes all over the map, with channel 3 (Cleveland's NBC affiliate) not reaching here at all. Everyone in the building (and most everyone in the village in which I live), however, has either cable or satellite rather than antennas, so we don't have any problems to speak of with standard NTSC; the transition to digital in 2009 should be seamless as well. I know I'm not concerned about it. My cable company (Time Warner) has assured me that when the time comes to switch entirely to digital, the cable system will be ready to go. I am presently using a digital cable box ahead of my 7-year-old RCA 19" analog TV, and get every Cleveland station even better than I could ever hope for with an antenna.
I am not planning on getting a flat-panel HD television any time soon until or unless two things happen: one, the sets drop in price to a point where the average person can afford them, and two, the sets will have to be one heck of a lot more reliable than they are now. Today's FP HDTVs are built, like everything else these days, to be throwaways after the manufacturer's warranty expires. When the video driver ICs go bad, for example, the entire panel must be replaced, since the chips are molded into the cable that connects the panel to the main chassis. Moreover, the panels themselves are not built to last more than two or three years; in fact, LCDs lose much of their brightness within five years, plasmas have heat-related issues, and DLP sets are prone to mechanical failures.
Even though HDTV has been around in this country awhile, the faults I just mentioned may keep flat-panel sets out of most American living rooms for some time. The pictures produced by FP sets are not that great either, if I am to believe some of the comments I've read here about them. (The consensus seems to be that CRTs still produce better pictures--blacker blacks, richer colors, etc.--than today's FPs.) I know it will be quite a while, if ever, before I replace my RCA CRT set with a FP--the flat-panel technology just has too many bugs in it right now.
You are correct in your observation that NTSC was supposed to have been shut down by now; the first FCC deadline for this was 2006, IIRC. Whether the deadline will be pushed back yet again remains to be seen.
There are, however, rules now in effect which state that all TVs with screens 32 inches and up must have ATSC tuners; next year another rule takes effect which states that all televisions 13 inches and larger must be equipped with ATSC tuners as well.
Whether or not this is a hint that all-digital TV is just around the corner, however, remains to be seen--as I said, the FCC may push back the deadline yet again (and again, and again...). I remember reading something somewhere very recently that said, in effect, digital HDTV is not all it is cracked up to be and may die out in a short time. Look at quadraphonic (four-channel) stereo sound in the '70s; it was dead by the early '80s. AM stereo radio is also pretty much dead as well after only a few years. High-definition (HD) FM? I believe that's headed down a dark road to oblivion as well. How many HD FM stereo systems and/or radios are there in the stores or in consumers' hands at this moment? I haven't seen any HD radio receivers yet. My best guess is HD FM will be as dead as AM stereo and quad sound in a very short time. The only advantage I can see with HD FM is that it gives those FM stations that use it a subchannel to broadcast another format on; I honestly do not believe, however, that it improves the sound all that much. An FM station in Cleveland claims to be broadcasting in HD but I'm darned if I can tell the difference between it and standard stereo FM, listening to the station on my 7-year-old Aiwa bookshelf stereo or any other FM radio I currently own.
High-definition TV is, IMHO, a fad that hasn't really caught on with the public, at least here in the Midwest. I know only one person (my barber) who actually has a HDTV flat-panel set; everyone else I know around here still uses the old reliable CRT TVs. The flat-panel sets are still far too expensive for most people to afford at this point, which is why RCA, and eventually other offshore TV manufacturers, have come out with a line of standard-definition TVs (SDTV). These are sets with a digital ATSC tuner already built in; the sets themselves are designed to receive digital HD signals and display them in the analog 4:3 aspect ratio TV viewers are accustomed to after well over five decades. These SDTVs are supposed to ease people into the transition from analog to digital, but my best guess is that most people will continue to use their analog CRT sets as long as they work. If you have cable, the conversion from digital to analog will be taken care of behind the scenes at the cable headend or in the cable box, if you use one. Satellite signals are digital by nature, so no conversion is needed with them at all; it is all done inside the satellite receiver. Again, my best guess right now is that most folks will run their current analog CRTs until they die,
then they may replace them with FP sets. I say "may" because until HD flat panels drop to reasonable prices (well under $1,000 for a 23" or larger set) and until the sets are made to last more than a year or two, these high-tech TVs aren't going to sell well--in fact, I don't think they are exactly flying off store shelves even now.
There are several alternatives to traditional TV, mostly Internet based (except DVDs, of course), so many people who cannot afford HDTV may turn to the Internet for their TV eventually. In fact, I believe that some day the Internet may revolutionize television yet again (if it hasn't already made inroads to that effect), replacing high-definition digital OTA and cable. I have a lifetime membership to TV.org (
www.tv.org), a site specializing in downloadable episodes of current and past TV series, and I use it quite a bit after rediscovering it last night. In fact, about the only time I watch regular TV anymore is for news and sports; between TV.org, network netcasts (NBC and ABC world news, et al.) and DVDs (I also have a subscription to Netflix), I find all the TV I like without having to watch the stuff that passes for entertainment on cable. The so-called "500-channel universe" is just a catch phrase from digital cable's early days, as no city (that I am aware of) has anywhere near 500 channels on their cable systems, even if you count digital stations--in fact, the cable operator in my area (Time Warner) only offers 200 channels on their digital service, if you get their best and most expensive package (counting movie channels--TW has three HBOs, three Showtime channels, at least three Cinemax, and on and on), and far less on the two tiers of analog service. Another fine example of media hype gone hog wild.