HarveyH42 said:My picture is fuzzy right now. Does that mean It will be fuzzy with the converter box? Or that I'm a moron?
Actually, at first I figured the picture would be as good as I get watching a movie of the VCR or DVD. But from reading some reviews of the converter boxes, I tend to believe there will be problems, mostly at the border. Some make me wonder why the manufacturer would consider selling such a useless piece of crap. Wish I would have done my searching, before signing up for the coupons. Got about 2 months left, the good ones don't seem to be stocked in local stores. Walmart only had one model in the store, and not much good said about it online. I have to agree, these will in no way be an upgrade, just basic compatibility. Just a scheme to get people out buying new expensive TVs.
Obviously I can't comment on how it works in the USA, but in the UK there are no coupons, everyone has to buy their own set-top boxes or TV's with digital tuners built-in. However, the switchover is taking about ten years all told.
So, basically two options:
1) Buy an SD set-top box, connect to your TV via an RGB SCART lead - result high quality digital pictures, not as good as DVD (as it's more compressed) but better than analogue terrestrial. A common option is to buy a PVR, which has two tuners and an HDD, so you can record two channels at once, and gives various trick functions.
2) Buy a new TV, LCD or Plasma, this has an in-built digital tuner, and gives the same high quality pictures in RGB as the separate box.
Unfortunately the USA doesn't use SCART or RGB, you use the slightly lower quality Component system, but you should connect using that, and never via RF or composite video.