You all know that by some time in 2009 all TV receivers will have to be "high definition" ones, the pictures that look a lot better than the TV pictures we get now. For those of us in Egremont, that's going to be a problem.

We don't have cable in Egremont, so most of us use a satellite service, either DirectTV or Dish. Because it's hilly and there are lots of trees, getting a satellite dish to point at the satellite is often a problem. It's going to get worse.

I bought new HD TVs recently, because I knew I had to by 2009 and becasue DirectTV already transmits a lot of shows in HD. But when DirectTV came out to put in the boxes, etc., they said I couldn't get the service. Seems your dish needs to look at THREE satellites to get HD, and two of them are a lot lower on the horizon than the one my dish looks at now, so the combination of hills and trees will block me out. I then called Dish, and they came out and said they use the same three satellites, so I was out of luck with them too.

So I think I'll have to put up a tall pole of some sort, and that may get expensive because the dish you use for HD is a lot bigger than the one you use for regular TV, and therefore requires all kinds of guy wires and stuff to protect from wind, etc.

It may make sense for neighbors to get together and share the cost of a common pole. Is that doable? If you know anything about this whole HD problem, please enter a comment so we can all get educated.