Hey,

Sorry for the newbish question but here goes.

I am picking up a Terk Indoor antenna right now from The Source to test the receiving strength from my home's location.

The test TV has a built-in ATSC tuner, but it is not an HDTV. I do have another HDTV but cannot use it at this time for this test.

If reception is good, will I be able to receive AND test the HD channels with this TV? I know it won't be HD quality, but I am hoping it will simply adjust the aspect ratio like my current Directv receiver does whenever I navigate to an HD channel,

Or, will it simply just pickup the HD channel (how will I know from the channel list?) and I just won't be able to view it?

Thanks in advance!

What kind of TV is this that has ATSC but isn't even basic HD resolution?

At any rate digital channels will appear as #-# or #.#, for example CTV is 40.1 (or 9.1) instead of plain old 9.

I'm not sure where you are, so I can't really guess what you're going to be able to receive with a small indoor antenna (but I hope you're close to something). If you can pick up american networks such as Fox or PBS then they're *only* digital at this point.

A TV with an ATSC tuner has to be able to display or process if you will all 18 formats available on the ATSC standard (yes there are 18 formats but the TV industry uses only 2, 720p and 1080i). As a matter of fact there are 2 types of digital TV's , the HDTV-Ready kind that basically can display those formats but lacks the ATSC tuner and the HDTV that therefore has the tuner incorporated. All recently manufactured and sold TV's in US are HDTV (with the tuner) as it was mandated by the FCC few years ago.

I am almost 100% sure the OP has therefore an HDTV fully capable of displaying the before mentioned 720p and 1080i formats hence enjoy your shows in HD from now on. Some TV's are 1080p nativelly therefore could display that format (1080p) that is used by the Movie industry with the Blu-Ray discs (very recently Pay TV providers like DN in USA are offering 1080p on demand content as well). But beleive me, you will see no difference , at normal viewing distances, watching 720p or 1080i content on a non native or a native 1080p display.

BTW , as usual , I almost forgot , Welcome to the forum. Enjoy it.

Hey, don't forget about 480p subchannel goodness! :-)