Well if you're fortunate enough to live in a major television market like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, etc, then you can now tune in approximately three to five channels of limited content broadcasting a fixed amount of HDTV material.

These channels are usually CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and in some areas UPN. All are currently pulled in via airwaves, meaning you've got to hook up a digital antenna to your home in order to receive the signal.

After all this trouble you're finally rewarded with HDTV broadcasts of Monday Night Football, The Tonight Show, ER, and other commercial-filled network shows. Not exactly home-theater nirvana, and pretty far from the HDTV "home theater" movie heaven you had originally envisioned.

Luckily there's a solution that's available anywhere in the United States now that offers 24-hour HDTV movie content on two channels, and it's free from commercial interruption or other various edits.

The solution we're referring to is the satellite powered DirecTV network, (formerly known as the DSS network) and the hardware utilized are various new HDTV DirecTV decoder boxes such as Panasonic's TU-HDS20.

The TU-HDS20 works like a traditional DirecTV decoding box, only it contains the hardware needed to decode the HDTV satellite signals. Ordinary DirecTV decoders like the kind sold in the US for four years now aren't able to receive the new HDTV DirecTV broadcast, thus a new box (and 18" x 24" satellite antenna) are needed.

The beauty of Panasonic's TU-HDS20 HDTV DirecTV decoder box is that it also functions as the standard HDTV decoder that's needed for all HDTV sets regardless of whether the signal comes from the airwaves or via DirecTV's satellites.

In fact, even though Panasonic wasn't naming the exact models of their competitor's HDTVs, it turns out the new TU-HDS20 is compatible with HDTV sets besides those from just Panasonic.

To summarize, a consumer looking for sharp, unedited, commercial-free HDTV movies would need to purchase only a new 18" x 24" DirecTV dish, a Panasonic TU-HDS20 DirecTV decoder, and an HDTV set itself, and they're ready to receive the maximum amount of HDTV content currently available.

The TU-HDS20 is set to go on sale in April at an MSRP of $1,099.