I guess you are right about the expansion of High Def. Only 12 markets have been announced so far and it is just local channels. I would take it though as I can't pick em up with a OTA antenna from the berg I live in.

In addition, by reading between the lines in the Press release I think we can determine that present HD programming is being sent to us via MPEG2 and being decompresssed by our receivers. Hence, we can also now determine why you are experiencing audio dropouts and I am not. I will also hazard a guess that your new receiver will take care of this issue. I saw that DirecTV booth when I was at CES but I faied to visit. Iwish I would have now, so I could have seen the MPEG4 demo. Rats!