[Michael (Unverified) Posted Oct 23rd 2006 2:12PM]

"when the high-definition broadcast signal cutoff is complete"

From my understanding it's not a "high-definition broadcast", it's digital. The FCC said that the Analog signal must be replaced with a digital signal, which doesn't mean the "new" content will be HD (although most might be), but it will be sent digitally. What this means if you have an over the air antenna, you won't see snow any longer in a picture, it will be either on or off, and if the signal is low, you will get major amounts of pixelation. Also this means that if you are using an over the air antenna to receive television, you will no longer be able to receive any channels. You will need an some type of set-top tuner to pull in the digital feed, and give it to an analog input (coax, composite, s-video, component) that your TV will understand.

There will be MANY stations that still present the majority of their programming in NON-HD, but it will be broadcast digitally, instead of over analog means.

Already most of the cable providers and sat companies already send the signal digitally, so for them it's not a big deal (besides the FCC mandate to move to CableCards, which is a whole different issue). So that cut off you are referring to isn't an HDTV cutoff, it's a digital/analog cutoff.

The CRT TV will still work with those signals, but will require a different tuner to pick up the digital signals instead of the analog ones.