The good news: soon all terrestrial television broadcasting in the United States will be digital. The bad news: it’s impossible to receive that signal in moving cars. Above 5 mph or so, the ATSC signal breaks up. Because we absolutely need access to television at all times, work is progressing on technologies that would allow mobile ATSC reception. One such initiative by Harris and Zenith/LG is called MPH; it would allow reception at freeway speeds. MPH would extend the ATSC standard; broadcasters would install some new equipment, and consumers would fork over for a new mobile DTV receiver, such as the Kenwood demo unit that is shown here. The receiving antenna is amazingly small - comprising a translucent, windshield-mounted 5-inch film. MPH takes a subset, perhaps 4Mbps, of the broadcast 19.3Mbps; that subset is given extra robust error protection to guard against the signal insults in a moving environment. The picture quality is not HD, but is QVGA resolution, which ain’t bad. A competing proposal from Samsung and Rohde & Schwartz would perform similarly. MPH would allow reception at speeds up to 200 mph, and their computer simulators indicate that it should remain robust in excess of 400 mph. At that speed, it might be best to keep your eyes on the road. It is hoped that a mobile digital TV standard will be selected by the end of 2008. Until then, keep your speed down.