ATSC (well, 8-VSB) is pretty terrible at handling multipath. I live 12 miles from the antenna farm and ought to be able to get great reception with a bit of aluminium foil, but because I have a tree (who would have trees, right?) any one antenna position gets only about 2 channels well.
If the FCC hadn't succumbed to NIH and used the European version (COFDM), which handles multipath better, people might actually see the very nice picture available over digital broadcast.
Odd, we have trees and are 30 miles LOS from downtown. We get Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, 3 PBS, the hmm forgot the name, CB? something. We get all we want which is main networks and in beautiful HD. I think Fox is in HD not sure, it looks nice though. If we spoke Spanish we'd have more choices. A few times a year in the early evenings Fox sometimes has issues but overall I'd pay for the quality we get if it wasn't free, not much maybe $10 most per month. Don't get any ideas US government!
If the FCC hadn't succumbed to NIH and used the European version (COFDM), which handles multipath better, people might actually see the very nice picture available over digital broadcast.