You don't have much of a choice in NYC. Either cable or nothing...unless you live in a private house.

technically coop boards can't stop you from putting up a dish, but it's not worth the fight

I have TW Cable, and happy with it. Especially the On-Demand.

I have had direct since 1998. I have not had a contract since day one.

I have Direct TV HD and OTA HD. Discovery and HD Net are the best. OTA is ok but it depends on which channel, for instance CBS yesterday for football was simply awful, I finally turned of my HDTV and went back to the feed from Direct TV.

If you're under 40 miles from the towers, and have no hills/mountains between you and the towers, you could very well be suffering from too much signal rather than too little signal. The OTA tuner in the HDTivo is very susceptable to problems relating to too much signal. You can try a $10 variable attenuator from RadioShack and see if that helps.

The other likely culprit is multipathing, which again can be helped by an attenuator.

If you're farther from the towers than 20-40 miles and you're using the crappy antenna that DirecTV installs, that is your likely problem.

Have you tried OTA? This isn't analog OTA; you either have a picture or you don't. It isn't like the old days where the picture is full of static and waves.

Exactly. There is either a beautiful HD picture on your screen or nothing. There is no "terrible reception." I am fortunate enough to have the antenna Voom installed. I had no problems getting a signal for every OTA station when I used it. They hooked it up great.

So how can I find out for sure if I'd get a digital signal OTA? I'm like a 45 minute drive from the stations, probably 30 miles or so as the crow flies. I've heard this distance is normally fine, but I'm kind of down in a valley. I don't want to get an HDTV until I know I can get locals in HD.

http://www.antennaweb.org

Thanks, I've looked there before though, and something's weird - if I just put in my ZIP code, all the digital stations show up and are about 37 miles away. But when I put in my address and ZIP, actually 26 miles away, it shows no digital stations. I'm assuming this is just because of the valley I'm in?

So I guess what I'm asking is...how definitive is that site?

I'm not sure why there would be such a huge difference between your zip and your zip + address. Maybe look at a map and estimate the distance to see which is right?

It errs on the cautious side. I'm at approximately sea level, but at the base of a 1400+ foot hill that is between me and the towers. It doesn't show any digital stations for me, either, but I'm able to pick up ABC and CBS very well, and Fox, NBC, WB very well on some days, not well on others.

It took a lot of experimenting to get it working though. I ended up with a Channel Master 4228 antenna + Channel Master 7777 preamplifier mounted on a 10 foot antenna mast, and I had to move it around a few times until I found the most reliable place.