I've had a good experience with OTA DTV. With analog TV, I was lucky if I got Channel 7 clearly. The other three Seattle stations were a toss up, usually unviewable. 13 & 11? Forget it.
As soon as DTV kicked in, and I got an amplified antenna that sits on the top of the TV (and, of course, the DTV converter box, which one can still get for $40), I have about 10+ channels, most of them very watchable. 5 doesn't come in at all, neither does 11. 4, 4.1, 7, 7.1, 13, JoeTV, Ion, IonLife, Univision, and about three shopping channels, and the odd religious station all come in. The picture, compared to the analog pictures on the same exact TV, is terrific.
Fordranger, maybe you're just in a worse area than I'm in.
RE: AM going digital: I agree with Fordranger here -- if AM goes all digital it could cause a lot of stations to lose some audience. A lot of the stations may also have to boost the power if they do go all digital, to keep their present listening range.
Not having an HD radio, I have no clue if KXA's HD is readable south of Seattle where I live. But I can hear their analog signal o.k.
And being that they're the only local classic country AM station (unless there's an FM HD I don't know about), I wonder why they would want to go all digital and lose so much of their potential audience?
One big problem with AM going all digital is who'll buy the radios? The industry would have to to a pretty good sell job (or Congress would have to write legislation mandating the AM band to be included in automobile radios) for all digital AM to succeed.