Pardon the ignorance... UHF/VHF old antenna -> digital tuner

[xluke]

Good evening,
I appreciate y'alls consideration of these questions.
While I have satellite I am sick of the awful service provided by both satellite and cable providers, and dishonest or at least unscrupulous business actions that demand consumer feedback, such as turning off the service. This has led me to investigate receiving local media through the air waves.

I have connected an old UHF/VHF antenna to my HDTV. The service and reception is good, though occasionally there are some skips, characteristic of digital. My antenna has two standard connection forks which I have attached to an antenna->coax converter (small 1x1" device, not a digital tuner). On this antenna, is a dial with gradient from UHF-VHF presumably to tune.
Regarding this, here are my questions:
-Does the tuning dial actually make a difference regarding quality of reception, and is there a setting preferable for reception of digital signals (vhf or uhf)?
-Can both uhf and vhf antenna be connected to the same converter (I believe this is how I did it back in the day of analog but it has been a new york minute)? This is how I have it now.

Secondarily, I notice now that the DTV channels come in with program information much like a satellite "information" box (program name and description). Given this, is it possible to access a 'guide' of current channels and their program? I realize this may be digital tuner / tv specific. I have an olevia LCD hdtv. If not, I would be surprised as it would seem a simple task to scan the available channels information stream and display it in a collated fashion.

Thanks for the tips!

[tigerbangs]

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