If you rely on an old-school antenna to get your television fix like a surprising 15% of my fellow Americans—or me during the two weeks it took Cox to get their crap together this summer when I moved to New Orleans—it’s time to get your digital television converter box coupons from the government. While you wait for your coupons and for the boxes to show up at your favorite retailers, use this website to figure out how to get all your free-to-air digital TV with an antenna. Even if you use cable or satellite, I’d consider getting one of the boxes just to have for when your cable or satellite service goes out during your favorite sporting event or other TV show.

Of course, if you want high-definition television (or at least the full benefits thereof, since the coupon boxes will only give you downscaled HDTV at best), you’ll need to just junk the old TV and get a new one.

AVS Forum poster “10frog” has posted a detailed side-by-side comparison of the Digital Stream DTX-9900 and Zenith DT900 digital television converter boxes, which may be useful for those of you who have taken my advice and gotten your government coupons. Both boxes are available at RadioShack (but typically each RS only carries one of the two—most of the RS’s around New Orleans seem to carry the Digital Stream box); the Zenith is allegedly available at Circuit City and the apparently-electrically-identical Insignia NS-DXA1 is on the shelves at Best Buy.

Meanwhile, Slashdot is claiming that at least one of the CECB peddlers on the Internet is a scam artist.