I was faced with the same issue. I live within the Washington, DC DMA and receive the HD signal via the NY locals. I called our friends at Directv and pressed them for answers regarding my possible loss of NY HD signals. I was transfered to several different people and was finally told that if I upgraded to the new MPEG 4 and received the DC HD locals, I would loose the NY HD feeds. I did not upgrade due to the many rumors regarding Directv plans. I still have the NY HD channels. I lost the west coast HD feeds during the earlier HD fiasco.