Because of the surrounding hills everybody always needed directional antennas to receive the big stations without ghost, and higher gain UHF antennas to get the low power translators - exactly the characteristics of the split boom design. So for the 45 years there has been TV in Eugene, that's just what everybody used. I'm getting better reception today with digital than I ever got with analog on the same setup, so won't try to mess with success.
Today I don't know the exact frequency assignments of the local stations’ digital signals. I'll investigate that if the need ever arises to help someone tune up at a difficult location (I have built custom single channel antennas before).
Another observation I make about this HDTV antenna marketing scheme - I'm old enough to remember when color TV was new, and I now see HDTV antenna marketing is just a rerun - the manufacturers marketed special “color” TV antennas back in those days.
Years ago I lived over a mountain range and about 50 air miles from the Eugene market stations, and it took a deep fringe antenna about 20 feet long with a mast mounted amp to get anything. Even with an amp there is an environmental noise floor that's difficult to overcome with anything except very directional antenna arrays. Most of the population in that area was covered by one of the nation's very first cable TV systems, but out in that last mile and beyond, people with the money and the room put up stacked arrays of 4, 6, or 8 single channel antennas and super low noise preamps for each station they wanted to receive.
And if you're in that deep fringe and need or want to get OTA DTV the story is still the same - consumer grade setups today offer nothing more or less than they did 20 years ago in terms of antenna gain, signal to noise and so on. The antenna is still king and it will be either a compromise or a very expensive custom setup.
For those reasons a lot of folks can be very thankful for satellite.
I have used the “flat type” TV UHF antennas for fixed mount for quite some time. They do OK with high band VHF, no where near what a specific VHF antenna would receive. Their stack ability is good for doubling the gain. Flatties also work well in camouflage, where you can mount them on a flat wall down low, if circumstances allow.
Currently, my coat hanger one doesn’t use a reflector, so it is seriously compromised with F/B ratio, but seems to work well for what I want, sniffing the air.
My home made coat hanger DTV flatty is now standing ready for the Christmas HDTV ... To sniff out how good the area is with a really good tuner for digital OTA. If it’s good enough I may actually buy an antenna, probably a DB4.
It’s true, antenna technology hasn’t changed much in a very long time. Once the equations were known, and it was simple to build them, antennas seemed to be size dependent for the most part. As a ham, antennas are something you deal with a lot.
I am finding the OTA signals are far better with HDTV than is cable or satellite. Most cable and satellite is compressed 720 and most OTA is 1080i, at least around here it is. I canceled my DirecTV because of that. Well, that and the fact that there is nothing on it worth watching. We get videos from the local library, which produces much better picture and sound quality. I have a Christmas Blu-ray up scaling DVD to carry on with the tradition. Cheap compared to subscription TV -— LOL.