I bought a small tv that gets both the new digital and old analog. My question is to receive the new over the air digital tv do I need a special antenna?
It's not hdtv but will the rabbit ears work? Of course the guys at the store want to sell me 100 dollar antenna.
They also told me the new computer I bought my daughter would not work unless I paid the geek squad 150 to set it up so you can see why I won't take their advice.

You are in the States and I am in England but I don't see that that makes much difference.. Whether or not you need a new antenna would depend on how far you are from the transmitter. If you get a strong analogue signal now and assuming that the digital signal is coming from the same mast it ought to work.

Regards,
Trevor

I'm also in the UK but recently, visiting an area in Scotland where terrestrial reception was not very good, the digital reception was excellent - and this was on an indoor aerial!

A decent analogue aerial ought to be fine for digital; certainly I'd try things out on the existing aerial before shelling out on an upgrade. If possible, check your wiring as well, bad connections can really mess up the signal.

I use it for FOX and ABC, works great. Go to Antennaweb.org put your address in and you can see what channels are available in your area.

I also install and sell Home theater equipment

I guess I don't need a special antenna I bought a 10 dollar set of rabbit ears from radio shack and it works fine, as long as it has uhf and vhf I guess.

So is this digital thing worldwide? Are all tvs in the world switching to digital next year?

In the UK mike we are being switched over in phases between now and 2012. It will amnost certainly be world-wide eventually as digital broadcasting enables many more channels in the same wave band and releases the old analogue frequencies for yet more mobile phones!

Thanks for the reply, I'm on cable but I bought this new small tv for the garage and wanted to see just what the on air digital picture looks like.
I bought the lowest cable package I could, which is just the local channels. I don't watch that much tv but I wanted better reception. Looks like digital is the answer.