USDTV goes under

In what is quite possibly the best news all week, USDTV pulls the plug and HD picture quality improves. For those not keeping track; USDigital was the company that had the bright idea to use unused ATSC bits for a pay TV service, you know the bits that would've otherwise gone to your HD signal. Local affiliate general managers everywhere are looking for ways to offset the costs of the digital transition and USDTV was there to help. They paid the local affiliate to over compress OTA HD channels and instead used the throughput to bring USDTV customers paid cable channels like ESPN. The only good part for HD fans was the inexpensive USDTV boxes that could be found in other parts of the country and used as stand alone OTA HD tuners. All the USDTV customers left in the cold can continue to use their STBs as OTA HD tuners, but will have to go some place else for their cable channels.