The broadcast DTV in the US is severely hampered by being on UHF bands. Weak signals, weather fade and loss of signal are commonplace, especially for HDTV channels. The future of HDTV depends on the cable and satellite providers, who are seriously dragging feet on implimentation because 1: they don't have to do anything, and 2: the needed bandwidth is too costly and would force them to give up hundreds of channels of profitable crap like shopping channels and specialty channels. The US govt's attempts to force broadcasters to switch to DTV will fail as it is currently planned. Something like another 5-10 years will be needed.

The vast rural landscape here is served only by a huge system of thousands of small analog VHF and UHF repeaters that cannot broadcast DTV, much less HDTV. Add to that the fact that many people only buy a TV when one breaks, and lifespans of 10-15 years are common for TV's.

So all things considered, the real problem here is the failure of cable and satellite providers to invest in HDTV. It will eventually happen with innovations like MPEG-4, but the process will be slow, much slower than expected. HDTV will remain a high-end specialty market for several more years.

Low cost HDTV sets will help, but until the broadcast problems are resolved, there's won't be any switch to an all-digital system. It's also important to diferentiate between DTV and HDTV. Even now, some stations are broadcasting "EDTV" in 16:9, not HDTV. The difference is obvious, but it takes less bandwidth so it may well be the chosen format in broadcasting.