A better antenna could help. I doubt that switching from a DTV tuner on an analog TV to a digital TV would make much difference at all.

How far away is his "home city" from the mountain home ?

What size of antenna is he using (size matters)

indoor ? outdoor ?

Distance between the two homes is approximately 100 miles (Brooklyn, NY and Sullivan County, NY)

I don't remember the size of the antenna; it's an indoor one.

100 miles is quite a distance for TV signals ...

You'd need a larger UHF/VHF antenna, either indoor or better yet, outdoor antenna

And don't forget to rescan the TV for channels. Go to the converter remote and press menu, then do "auto tuning". We had to do that several times and intermittently to keep all the channels.

There was a site out there that had maps of which digital station covers which areas. I thought it was fcc.gov "reception maps" but today the map for my area in blank so I am not so sure of the URL.

In my area one station was on a different mountain from the other three and the map suggested the antenna would need to be rotated to get all four channels which theoretically cover parts of the area.

Antennaweb is a good source of information.

Here is a link that might be useful: AntennaWeb