In my opinion, digital television is very aggravating. I have had this new service ever since September 2008 and have constantly been receiving interruptions with pictures on three TVs, one connected to my Direct TV Satellite and two connected to converter boxes.

The major disturbances on all are when the picture freezes in motion and then whatever is showing in the picture looks like a puzzle exploding. When this happens the sound is also distorted. If the exploding is continuous, the screen will go blank and the words no signal will flow across the screen. When this happens on my flat-screen TV connected to the satellite, the sound will sometimes disappear for a half-hour.

The ironic thing is that all TVs were connected to this service by a trained and experienced TV repairman, so I know that it was done right. When I called this repairman about the problem, he told me to move the antennas around until the picture cleared up. When I do that, the picture may do well on that station, but then I have problems on another one.

I am an avid football fan and missed many plays during Sunday’s playoff games. I can imagine the words coming out of some people’s mouths if they had the same problems. So I decided to ask some of my friends if they were experiencing these problems. They were.

Can you imagine watching the Super Bowl, and a player is about to catch the ball, when all of a sudden he and the ball become like an exploding puzzle? Frankly, I’m sick of the service before it has even gotten off the ground.

However, I vowed to try to deal with the problem, when I found out in an article written by Tracy Agnew on Jan. 7 about who made the decision to change to digital television and why.

The article was titled, “The change is coming! Is your TV ready?” She indicated that the switch is being made by the U.S. Congress, which wanted to free up parts of the broadcast spectrum for public-safety communications, such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for improving public safety. I just hope that those responsible for having us change to digital television will find a way to fix this problem so we won’t feel the need to remind them of the famous phrase that says, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

In the meantime, I will attempt to find out where complaints can be made if more people are experiencing the same problems that I am.