TV DX-ing: Watching TV near you

[Adam]

I was flipping channels on the 1960 Zenith (there's nothing good on here on vhf at 3AM, I was just checking the remote), and I pulled in something on ch6. I am not aware of a ch6 around here, never got anything on it before, it only lasted for a few minutes, and there was a lot of FM interference, I really couldn't make out much, the audio that I think went with the tv station was in Spanish. It was a brief moment of excitement in an otherwise dull night.
I used to do TV dx-ing all the time. I had a 17" Zenith not too unlike this one and one of those made for FM radio only antennas ontop of a 2 story house I used for vhf, as well as a vhf/uhf television antenna ontop of one of the sheds. That FM only antenna actually worked surprisingly well on all the vhf channels. I really miss the TV dx-ing but being on the first floor of a 2 level apartment building there's not much I can do.
This is the only thing that really upsets me about the tv stations changing to digital. There's not much I like to watch on the tv anyway, most of the time I just watch DVDs or tapes. But if I'm receiving something from really far away I like watching it even if I don't like whatever program it is, and by the time I finally might be able to get a place I can put a big antenna on top of, they'll be nothing to receive with it. I know you are supposed to be able to get those converters, but I wouldn't think you would be able to DX with it, I wouldn't think it would work with a really weak signal. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know anything about this modern stuff. Has anybody tried it?
Oh well, if I can't do TV maybe I should get into the AM dx-ing, if I strung a copper wire from one end of the apartment to the other I might do pretty well, I got a 1948 Stromberg-Carlson console radio that one night pulled in an Albequerque station with just the built in antenna.