Me too. There's no comparison when watching a game or ANYTHING in HDTV to regular screen broadcasts. I thought congress mandated that all cable channels had to be HD ready by 2007. What's the real story? I'm pissed that I've got a great HD Plasma and I've got only a few shows that broadcast in HD. Why aren't we being accomodated?
The original mandate was that all OTA (Over The Air) broadcasters had to broadcast a digital signal (not necessarily HD - SD or ED is good enough) by 2007 or so. Last I heard that had been extended to 2009 due to a few lagards and many filed extensions.
The mandate was purely with respect to OTA though - not cable. To my knowledge, all major cable carriers have been broadcasting digital signals for some years now because digital channels use less bandwidth, and less bandwidth per channel means more channels can be crammed on the same coax to your set top box, which means they can charge you more money for all those extra channels.
The mandate for conversion to digital broadcasts was so that the FCC could recover the RF spectrum that has been used by inefficient analog TV broadcasts all these years. In this wireless age we live in, spectrum is in HIGH demand for telecom companies, new wireless devices, defense applications, etc. Leasing spectrum is a big potential money making opportunity for the gov. It doesn't make sense to waste huge amounts of limited spectrum on old, bandwidth-inefficient analog TV broadcast signals when digital ones are much more efficient. Hence the mandate (plus the potential revenue :). It's just dragging out.