You proudly have your new wide-screen HDTV set delivered to your living room; the little man hooks up your cable box to the set's back; turns it on, and you see a wonderful picture, bright and clear, but it doesn't fill the screen. The little man hits a button on the remote, and, viola, there it is! "Man," you exclaim, "I didn't realize HDTV was so good!" "Yeah," he hesitantly replies, "It's good, ok, but it's not HDTV." Then, after much prying, you surprisingly discover that your cable company does not have an HDTV service, and/or your satellite alternative does not offer local network channels in HDTV. What's even sadder is that in many instances the little man does not go past the "Yeah," and the customer remains convinced he is receiving HDTV, especially when he plays his DVD's (that, most times, look very good when watched on an up-converted HDTV set). Sound far-fetched? Indeed, it is not. These scenarios are quite common. Even though most of the "big five" cable companies serving the major metro areas offer local channel HDTV service, many secondary urban and suburban cable markets are not served by any local, and therefore, major network HDTV. The same is true for DBS (satellite) services. This situation is not static, however. Indeed, both Cable and DBS services are gradually increasing HDTV coverage to secondary metro areas. But this does not help our hypothetical customer. And, even when it is available, such service probably will not include the "secondary" local channels nor include the various SDTV multiplexes offered by any of the channels. The answer to this dilemma, at least in the near term, is an antenna to directly receive the local DTV channels. But, to many customers, an outside TV antenna system is expensive and ugly, if even possible. However, there is a very good chance that a simple indoor antenna will work quite satisfactorily. Much has been written that technically maligns over-the-air (OTA) reception of DTV. Yes, there are DTV characteristics that cause reliable OTA reception to be difficult when the signal is weak and/or reflections are present. However, advances in DTV tuner designs have greatly ameliorated many of these problems. Unfortunately, there have been no similar advances in indoor antenna designs to complement those tuner developments. Most new indoor antenna designs attempt to optimize the styling of the device, usually at the expense of performance. The good news is that most DTV channels are in the UHF band, allowing for efficient antenna performance in a comparatively small physically footprint. I have tested several different "set-top" antennas in a comparatively difficult reception environment. My test location (home lab) is located in a single story wood frame/brick-sided dwelling. The distance from the dozen of so Indianapolis DTV transmitters is no less than 20 statute miles. My test tuner/decoder is a first generation (RCA DTC100, circa 1998) DTV tuner design. Here is my conclusion: Baring metal obstacles that could completely block any signal energy from the antenna, there is a high probability of successful DTV reception with a simple, inexpensive ($20 or less) UHF or UHF/VHF set-top antenna. If you can receive viewable signals from your local analog UHF stations, even it they are quite "snowy" and "ghostly," the chances are very good you will enjoy excellent DTV/HDTV reception. In most cases, the biggest obstacle to reliable reception is moving reflections, commonly caused by leaf flutter or movement in the room. DTV is not very tolerant of moving reflections. These cause signal timing errors usually too fast for the decoder to track. The result is intermittent loss of picture and sound or picture freezing and blocking. Obviously, anything that isolates the antenna, such as reorientation or elevation, from the cause of the reflections will probably solve the problem. So, for those who have a new HDTV set but no HDTV source, there is no need to wait, besides, it's free, and that's a good thing. Ed