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Isn't your real question: Will the $60 converter box be better than the DTV you already have? In other words, will the generation N (n=5?) chipset in the box be that much better than the generation n-1? chipset in your Costco DTV that you can get decent reception? IMHO, probably not.
I've got the Radio Shack/Digital Stream box which supposedly uses the latest greatest LG chipset, and it's really discouraging. Hold my tounge just right, point the old rusty Radio Shack UHF log periodic the wrong way, and I can get the "just over the top of the hill" local stations. (I think I'm actually getting the signal via a bounce off a bluff about five miles away). Just on the margin of usabilty.
Putting up the Signal Strength/Quality display and changing channels shows the box learning how to cope with the multipath. First, it has to lock into the clock, which can take 10-15 seconds, then it takes about five seconds to bring the datestream up enough to a marginal level (from a reading of below 10 up to a reading of 35 or so).
And then a container ship sails in/out of Tacoma and all those stations go away for 15 minutes or so. Having 900x100 feet of flat metal surface go by, even 5 to 10 miles away, causes the signal to crash. For the analog stations (on the same towers), you can see the picture throb at about 1 hz. Too fast for the box to compensate.
On the other hand, if the multpath is below some threshold, the weak signal performance is impressive. Putting the box to the paper clip test (actually a 4 inch hunk of hookup wire jammed into the F connector), I could get a relativly low power station, (line of sight from 20 miles away), while the same station in analog, (from the same site and one channel over), was too snowy to bother with. The three (out of the ten possible) stations in line of sight don't have a problem when the ships going by.
Maybe with multiple antennas and a teraflop of processing power to do diversity, somebody could come up with a reliable box, but it won't sell for $60. Or some fancy phased array antenna...
You could try contacting the stations' engineers or their PR department and see if they could help you set up some translators on a nearby mountain. One of our stations here has a tradition of doing that, and it looks like they're going to set up some digital versions of same.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)