No you don't.

Remember that old antenna your grandfather erected in 1954 to watch KAKE-TV's October 19th sign-on?

Yes, the miracle of television, stunning black and white images, with monaural sound. Hopefully you lived close enough, or had a good antenna installed, to limit any pesky "snow" or "ghosting". Some would tune-in just to watch the "Indian Head" test pattern.

That same antenna, can now capture digital TV. No kidding. If it's still up there on the mast, and in good shape, just run some new coax cable to a HDTV. Then enjoy free over-the-air programming from KAKE-TV and ABC in High Definition, with Dolby Digital sound. Digital TV is free from any "snow" or ghosting". Those problems simply don't exist in the digital TV world.

I know it boggles the mind to think with DTV, an antenna can look better than cable or satellite. But, it can.

How? All digital video quality isn't equal. The more bandwidth, or the larger the data "pipe", the better the picture.

We can broadcast a digital stream of data over-the-air at 19.38Mbps. That may sound big, but we need to compress a HDTV program to fit into our pipe. Any time you compress digital video, you lose some picture quality. Cable companies have a smaller pipe than broadcasters, for each channel. Satellite companies have even less bandwidth, per channel. So, the more compression, the more the picture is degraded.

To be fair, TV stations use MPEG-2 to compress the data. Some cable companies and satellite are now using MPEG-4. The newer encoding allows the same amount of data to fit into a smaller pipe. This will help them deliver a better picture, for the bandwidth they have to work with. But, it can never be better than the source.

It's amazing how in the analog world of TV sometimes you had to use cable or satellite for the best image. Now, thanks to digital television, a simple antenna can give you the best viewing experience. Depending on where you live, a simple set of "rabbit-ears" may provide prefect reception.