SURVEY: do you think the stations will move back to vhf soon?  

DTV on VHF exists in some areas now. as for those prposing to move to VHF, wont be till some time around or after 2006 most likeky. Broadcasters have it in their mentality a lower channel number is better to get viewers to remember it single digit channel numbers being the most coveted.

There are economic and technical reasons (pro and con) for chosing VHF or UHF.

VHF requires considerably less power to get the same coverage and the signals are less subject to line of sight constraints. On the down side VHF is more susceptible to impulse noise generated by power lines, car ignitions and electric motors. This is somewhat annoying with analog signals but can be very disruptive to digital signals. The experience gathered by the few stations now operating in the low VHF band will inform the decisions of stations in the future.

I would think that the best place for DTV to be would be a high V. The station saves a lot of money on power costs compared to UHF and gets better coverage than UHF. I read an article a while back saying that the present power levels being given to low V DTV stations were way to low if you consider the terrestrial interference present at these frequencies.

Off Topic: I think we have hit the nail on the head here as far as why DTV reception is so vexing for some. The ridiculously low power levels currently in use by nearly all DTV broadcasters. While it is not needed that DTV use as high power kevels as analog, higher power would solve a lot of DTV reception woes ( knock on wood no problems here ).

Higher power would help with coverage but would do very little to help multipath issues. As the main signal increases in power all reflected signals increase in power also. There is a small degree of increased obsorbtion of the reflected signal but not much.

IMHO
I think all DTs should be UHF. The electrical interference present on VHF (low)frequencies and the possibility of impulse noise from lightning on VHF (high)frequencies does not go well with amplitude modulated 8VSB. Higher frequencies are less prone to noise interference when using AM. In other words less possibilities of dropouts.
In addition, VHF (low)DTs have a tendency to invade analog cable transmissions using the same frequencies. Third, I thought one of the key reasons for the transition to digital was to sell off the VHF(low), VHF (high)and high UHF 59-69 frequencies for other uses.

VLF is not part of the television band, you mean low VHF. The VHF band will not be sold off, it will be used for DTV. The UHF channels above 51 will be returned.

Nit picky but... TV does not use VLF freqs. the correct bands are VHF(low) and VHF(hi). VLF and ELF are used to send low symbol rate code to submarines.

VHF DTV is going to exist in some areas and will be best avoided in others. There was never any credible/serious plan to auction VHF freqs.