DTV Converter box major snafu in the US
Seerialmom
coupons before the digital switch over, however those who have applied
for an received them are apparently finding they either can't locate a
box to buy or the coupons are expiring before they can buy. And of
course our lovely government with the brightest red tape available,
has rules in place saying they can't reapply for the coupons. What I
don't understand was why the 90 day expiration when the switchover
doesn't happen until February 2009? Anyway...interesting MSNBC
article about this snafu:
Dennis
Why is it that I have this nagging suspicion that if the coupons could
be used to buy beer or cigarettes instead, these same people wouldn't
have any problem redeeming them? ;-)
I got my coupon in mid-March -- the expiration date was clearly noted.
I redeemed it for a convertor at Radio Shack a couple weeks ago. There
was a stack of the convertors on display. I've also seen some on
display at the local WalMart.
Dennis (evil)
--
An inherent weakness of a pure democracy is that half
the voters are below average intelligence.
AllEmailDeletedImmediately
"Shawn Hirn" <sr...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:srhi-7B55FE.0...@newsgroups.comcast.net...
> In article
> <3fffcb24-ebcb-45c9...@p25g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
> My 78 year old technophobe dad had no problem finding a digital TV
> converter box for my parents' 20 year old TV, but try as he might, he
> couldn't get the stations he likes. He likes to watch a station out of
> Lehigh Valley, I think, which hasn't gone digital. As I understand it,
> local low power stations are not not mandated to go digital.
this is correct. you'll need an anolog tv to watch these stations.
>
> My dad returned the box to Wal-Mart where he bought it. He decided he'll
> just wait until a few weeks prior to the conversion in 2009 and replace
> his old TV with a digital model and buy a high definition antenna so he
> can take advantage of HD TV. Unfortunately, I doubt that will help him
> receive the channels he likes. Local channels and their viewers will be
> screwed when this TV conversion takes place, which is a flagrant
> violation of the First Amendment. On the up side, most of those
> conservative wing nut religious channels fall into this category, so its
> hard for me to shed much tears for them.
their faithful watchers will continue watching on analog.
----------------------
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice
cannot sleep forever."--Thomas Jefferson
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide
everything." -- Josef V. Stalin
www.myspace.com/bodybuildinggranny
heavy on the country music. if you don't like country, scroll down for
some surprises.
Dennis
>Dennis <dg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I got my coupon in mid-March -- the expiration date was clearly noted.
>>I redeemed it for a convertor at Radio Shack a couple weeks ago.
> What I don't understand is why the coupons are redeemable only
>against mediocre models from select manufacturers. High-end converters
>with adequate sensitivity for low-signal "fringe" reception do not
>qualify for the coupon and are currently priced in the $170 range.
> Although, teevee aerial reception in my area has been adequate,
>IME, since 1977, within the past year, increased noise and noticeably
>weaker signals, AWA recent acquisition of a color teevee -- our first --
>have caused me to replace the antenna, downline, etc. Subsequently,
>largely from curiosity, I purchased a thoroughly medium quality digital
>SDTV just to see what is what. The digital set has since been returned
>to the retailer. Guess what is what: Not surprisingly, at its best, the
>set's cheapo analog tuner would ( only sometimes) receive as many as
>three of the eight (English language) channels normally accessible to
>me; the digital tuner would receive a total of one of the four-or-five
>digital broadcast stations available to me. Most often, particularly
>during daylight hours, the set displayed a "no signal" blue screen. Wow:
>Another technological advance. As one might suspect, the digital set
>went back and DW&I reverted to our relatively new-to-us small screen
>Salvation Army special, which does pretty well with its new antenna,
>although, many channels remain noisy.
> The future does not bode well for digital aerial broadcast
>reception, at least, in fringe areas. I am shopping for a converter box
>with excellent sensitivity but without "features" that do essentially
>nothing but add to the price. Hopeful but not optimistic that
>competition will produce lower prices as The Day approaches.
Of course it doesn't help that many broadcasters are transmitting less
than full power digital signals until the switch over next Feb. Could
be that some fringe areas now would be fine after the ramp up, but who
knows?
I'm lucky -- while I'm a ways out in the country, I live on a
mountain top with a mostly unobstructed path to the towers -- I get
pretty good analog signal and near-flawless digital signal from my
rooftop antenna.
Dennis (evil)
--
I'm behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave,
dodging the bullet and pushing the envelope. -George Carlin
Jim Prescott
Shawn Hirn <sr...@comcast.net> wrote:
>My 78 year old technophobe dad had no problem finding a digital TV
>converter box for my parents' 20 year old TV, but try as he might, he
>couldn't get the stations he likes. He likes to watch a station out of
>Lehigh Valley, I think, which hasn't gone digital. As I understand it,
>local low power stations are not not mandated to go digital.
You can find out what stations are available at any address, both now
and after 2/17/2009, at www.tvfool.com. While some LP stations can't
afford the cutover at all, many just can't afford to broadcast both
analog and digital prior to conversion; they will just do a flash
cutover to digital at some point.
If you care about LP stations then you definitely need one of the
converter boxes that provides RF pass-through (or be willing to get a
splitter and do it yourself) so that you can easily manage having both
analog and digital stations.
>My dad returned the box to Wal-Mart where he bought it. He decided he'll
>just wait until a few weeks prior to the conversion in 2009 and replace
>his old TV with a digital model and buy a high definition antenna so he
>can take advantage of HD TV. Unfortunately, I doubt that will help him
>receive the channels he likes.
A digital TV that can receive both analog and digital channels would be
easier to use than a converter box but probably won't pull in any more
digital channels. TVs differ in how well they handle digital and RF on the
same input so you want to make sure what you get works the way you want.
Also note that an HD antenna is no more or less capable of receiving HD
than a regular antenna. If his current antenna provides a good picture
then it should bring in HD just fine. A new antenna might be worthwhile if
the old is weathered or corroded, and a new one might be smaller if tvfool
tells you you don't need channels 2-6 (or smaller still if you don't need
2-13) but if the old one is working fine you don't need a new HD one.
--
Jim Prescott - Computing and Networking Group j...@seas.rochester.edu
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, NY
Seerialmom
> In article
> <3fffcb24-ebcb-45c9-9d2f-117ef9690...@p25g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
> local TV stations that can't afford the cost to go digital are left out.
> I am all for going to digital TV, but the way the government is doing it
> is insane.
>
> My 78 year old technophobe dad had no problem finding a digital TV
> converter box for my parents' 20 year old TV, but try as he might, he
> couldn't get the stations he likes. He likes to watch a station out of
> Lehigh Valley, I think, which hasn't gone digital. As I understand it,
> local low power stations are not not mandated to go digital.
>
> just wait until a few weeks prior to the conversion in 2009 and replace
> his old TV with a digital model and buy a high definition antenna so he
> can take advantage of HD TV. Unfortunately, I doubt that will help him
> screwed when this TV conversion takes place, which is a flagrant
> violation of the First Amendment. On the up side, most of those
> conservative wing nut religious channels fall into this category, so its
> hard for me to shed much tears for them.
That'll definitely help the economy...however I don't think he'll
improve the ability to see the station he likes, especially if it no
longer broadcasts due to the loss of the analog signal?
Logan Shaw
> I haven't applied for or technically need one of those converter box
> coupons before the digital switch over, however those who have applied
> for an received them are apparently finding they either can't locate a
> box to buy or the coupons are expiring before they can buy. And of
> course our lovely government with the brightest red tape available,
> has rules in place saying they can't reapply for the coupons. What I
> don't understand was why the 90 day expiration when the switchover
> doesn't happen until February 2009?
Seems obvious why: they have 90-day expiration to avoid there being
a huge rush in February 2009. They're trying to spread it out over
the entire year.
- Logan
Logan Shaw
> What I don't understand is why the coupons are redeemable only
> against mediocre models from select manufacturers. High-end converters
> with adequate sensitivity for low-signal "fringe" reception do not
> qualify for the coupon and are currently priced in the $170 range.
If I had to guess, I'd say the manufacturers are targeting two niches:
converters that are cheap enough so you can almost/mostly pay for
them with the coupon, and converters that you can't and are more
full-featured.
The restriction that you can't use the converter on one with certain
features (such as a digital output) is a little strange, but I can see
why that restriction exists. It exists because if it didn't, just
about every video-related piece of equipment in the world would
suddenly start sporting an analog TV output and an ATSC tuner. That
would make it technically a "converter" and suddenly the manufacturer
has produced a product that the consumer gets a free $40 toward.
For example, a camcorder already probably has an analog video out.
Just add an ATSC tuner, and suddenly it's a "converter". Likewise,
a Tivo model with an ATSC tuner and an analog output would be a
"converter" as well.
> Although, teevee aerial reception in my area has been adequate,
> IME, since 1977, within the past year, increased noise and noticeably
> weaker signals, AWA recent acquisition of a color teevee -- our first --
> have caused me to replace the antenna, downline, etc. Subsequently,
> largely from curiosity, I purchased a thoroughly medium quality digital
> SDTV just to see what is what.
I didn't even know they made standard-def televisions with ATSC tuners.
I have no doubt at all that it's possible, but I just wasn't aware any
manufacturers were doing it. Lo and behold, now that I've googled it,
it appears they in fact do make them.
> The digital set has since been returned
> to the retailer. Guess what is what: Not surprisingly, at its best, the
> set's cheapo analog tuner would ( only sometimes) receive as many as
> three of the eight (English language) channels normally accessible to
> me; the digital tuner would receive a total of one of the four-or-five
> digital broadcast stations available to me.
Well, if it's receiving fewer analog stations than your old analog set,
then it sounds like the tuner section of the television was not very
good. Nevertheless, one of the things about digital TV is that once
the signal degrades past a certain point, it fails pretty much
catastrophically and the entire signal is lost. With analog TV, you
could always stare at a screen that is 90% snow and 10% picture.
With digital, you do not have that option.
On the other hand, what's worse for some people is actually better
for others. My parents finally broke down and got cable TV when
someone built an office building a mile or so away from them. It was
in just the right position that once it was built, several of the
local stations had horrible ghost images that they didn't have before.
It made it almost unwatchable. The thing about ATSC is that because
of the type of modulation it uses, multipath interference like this
is supposed to allow an ATSC tuner to, quite amazingly, get *better*
reception[1]. So because of digital TV, there are people who for the
first time in years actually have a chance of receiving a clear
signal over the air.
- Logan
[1] Essentially, an ATSC tuner and the ATSC transmitter are changing
frequencies really often. By the time the echo from the office
building (or what have you) arrives, the transmitter and the
receiver have moved on to another frequency. Thus the echo
conflicts with nothing and can be picked up by the receiver
too and used as a second source to supplement the information
that was available in the main signal. It's sort of an instant
replay for your TV tuner in case it missed the signal the first
time.
larry
enabling legislation on-line. It was to provide assistance
to the remaining 10% limited to receiving broadcast TV.
The converter limitations were to limit cannibalizing the
new TV set market. It was not a handout to help everyone get
the latest in video technology. But to allow those limited
to a standard TV to still receive a comparable TV signal
after the switch.
The coupon fund was an advance from the spectrum auctions.
The coupon expiration would quickly recover unused coupons
for new coupons, or return the funds back to the auction.
Coupons wouldn't be spent if the holder just bought a
digital tv. Near the end of the program, there could be
another smaller funding if a certain dtv reception level
wasn't met. Also, there was a generous advertising budget
connected to the coupon fund. Of course, the converter
manufacturers and retailers were late, and are now inundated
with buyers and nothing to sell. Also, even though 90% have
cable/dish/etc, there are many of those still receiving
broadcasts on analog sets that now want converters. So, the
goal is to get as many analog viewers reconnected as
possible, but also get every unused dime back.
-larry / dallas
Rod Speed
> [1] Essentially, an ATSC tuner and the ATSC transmitter are changing frequencies really often.
No they dont.
> By the time the echo from the office building (or what have you) arrives, the transmitter and the receiver have
> moved on to another frequency.
Wrong.
> Thus the echo conflicts with nothing and can be picked up by the receiver too and used as a second source to
> supplement the information that was available in the main signal.
Utterly mangled all over again.
> It's sort of an instant replay for your TV tuner in case it missed the signal the first time.
Utterly mangled all over again.
Dennis
> If that means standard definition digital reception, those units
>represent the majority on shelves at the two big-box retailers that I
>visited and, I suspect, will capture the biggest portion of the
>potential market. Surely, I'm not the only occasional viewer who is
>being compelled into a subjectively imperceptible "improvement" and who
>is unwilling to pay a premium for so-called high definition anything.
>Certainly, if the performance of demonstration units that one sees in
>retailers is typical HD, then I suspect a mass occurrence of BMW
>Syndrome.
I'm not sure what you saw demo'ed, but full resolution HDTV is a major
improvement over SD (analog or digital). On some sets, about 2
megapixels vs. 1/4 megapixel.
Unfortunately, the improved picture quality doesn't do anything to
improve content. ;-)
Dennis (evil)
--
I'm a hands-on, footloose, knee-jerk head case. -George Carlin
Jamie
gotten the boxes ins tock and the clerk had no clue had to scan the
coupon and the register didn't take it. Today I tried it at Best Buy
and it worked fine. I'd ordered mine in Febraury and received it at
the end of April. It expires July 10.
Logan Shaw
> Logan Shaw <lshaw-...@austin.rr.com> wrote:
>> The thing about ATSC is that because
>> of the type of modulation it uses, multipath interference like this
>> is supposed to allow an ATSC tuner to, quite amazingly, get *better*
>> reception[1]. So because of digital TV, there are people who for the
>> first time in years actually have a chance of receiving a clear
>> signal over the air.
>
>> [1] Essentially, an ATSC tuner and the ATSC transmitter are changing frequencies really often.
>
> No they dont.
Hmm, I have to admit I'm wrong on this point. I would have bet money that I
had read an entire article describing how ATSC uses frequency-hopping and how
this turns multipath from a problem to an advantage. Apparently something
went wrong in the process of my remembering it correctly, though, because I
can now find no information that supports this idea. The closest I could
find was some assertions that newer ATSC receivers are much better at dealing
with multipath interference than older ATSC receivers were (but that's not
the same thing).
Maybe I was thinking of 802.11n or something. I don't know.
- Logan
Logan Shaw
> Dennis <dg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure what you saw demo'ed, but full resolution HDTV is a major
>> improvement over SD (analog or digital). On some sets, about 2
>> megapixels vs. 1/4 megapixel.
> I don't know, either. DW&I haven't exactly kept up with the wonders
> of video technology so I just did the old detune and cruise the aisle
> sort out in three stores. It's a safe bet each was receiving Bright
> House cable or Direct TV.
That could be the explanation as to why the picture wasn't all that
impressive. Digital TV, especially when it comes to cable, gives you
a choice about what quality of signal to transmit. A cable television
operator can choose to transmit a relatively small number of high-quality
channels, or they can choose to transmit a huge number of channels whose
quality is really bad. Or somewhere in between. They tend to choose
the option of many low-quality channels.
If you are in a store sometime with some time to kill, ask to see an
HDTV set showing an HD cable television signal and then the same set
showing a movie off a Blu-ray disc. The Blu-ray will show you what
the television set is actually capable of if it is given a signal
which isn't utter trash.
> What I did notice about many is
> an unnatural and annoying, hard-edged granularity similar to, say, a
> laptop monitor.
Are you referring to phenomenon where the picture is broken up into
squares specifically, often about 1/4" to 1/2" in diameter (depending
on many factors) like you see on many videos on the internet, for
example on youtube? If so, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
These chunks are a symptom of someone encoding the video in such a
way as to use as little bandwidth as possible, i.e. what the cable
companies do to save money and cram more channels in. It looks
positively terrible. You can recognize the phenomenon I'm talking
about because it gets worse if there is a lot of motion in the
program you're watching. For example, during sports they often
jerk the camera to the side quickly to follow the action, and when
they do, you will see the squares I'm talking about. After the
picture is relatively still for a short period (even a fraction of
a second), the squares will get less noticeable.
Anyway, if you see this, just be aware that it is a choice made by
the cable operator (or satellite dish people or whatever), not an
inherent limitation of the technology.
- Logan
The Real Bev
> Why is it that I have this nagging suspicion that if the coupons could
> be used to buy beer or cigarettes instead, these same people wouldn't
> have any problem redeeming them? ;-)
Probably the same people who have problems with rebates :-(
> I got my coupon in mid-March -- the expiration date was clearly noted.
> I redeemed it for a convertor at Radio Shack a couple weeks ago. There
> was a stack of the convertors on display. I've also seen some on
> display at the local WalMart.
Walmart has the best deal, but Best Buy also has some. I think there's
a list of approved stores on the website.
--
Cheers,
Bev
*****************************************************************
"Why does everybody always forget the eigthth dwarf? Just because
poor old Lumpy died of cancer doesn't mean he should be written
out of history." -- RMassey
Dennis
> I was attempting to describe a picture that is unnaturally bright,
>"sharp", hard-edged and gritty. Interference and diffraction eliminate
>hard edges in visual reality (although, in many situations, the brain
>provides them) while they are present in virtually all graphics,
>regardless of medium. Their presence is one of the visual cues that we
>use to differentiate between real and make-believe. For some reason,
>some people seem to want their teevees to look "better" than real which,
>I suppose, explains the spectre of misadjusted, garishly oversaturated,
>contrasty color sets that one encounters in living rooms everywhere.
Most sets come, inexplicably, adjusted to these qualities from the
factory. Contrast and sharpness cranked way up. Even if they're not,
most salesdweebs set them up this way for floor demos. It took a
couple days of fiddling with the settings to get my HD plasma set to
display a picture to my liking.
> I had always thought the inherent technical superiority of digital
>broadcasting was that it requires no bandwidth, resulting in greater
>signal propagation with far less power required.
> Not particularly interested in cable, satellite, video disks, etc.
>I just want DW to be able to watch y&r with a minimum of crabbing about
>yet another technological "advance" that really has done nothing from
>this end-user's POV except provide another buying opportunity. In the
>best of all possible worlds, the loss of teevee broadcast signal would
>provide the impetus to remove the slime chute from my daily environment
>and, who knows, it may.
More bad news: most daytime broadcast shows are still SD, so they look
pretty lame on yer shiny new HDTV (even after it is adjusted). Maybe
this will change by/after 02/09.
Dennis
<bashley1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Dennis wrote:
>
>> Why is it that I have this nagging suspicion that if the coupons could
>> be used to buy beer or cigarettes instead, these same people wouldn't
>> have any problem redeeming them? ;-)
>
>Probably the same people who have problems with rebates :-(
>
>> I got my coupon in mid-March -- the expiration date was clearly noted.
>> I redeemed it for a convertor at Radio Shack a couple weeks ago. There
>> was a stack of the convertors on display. I've also seen some on
>> display at the local WalMart.
>
>Walmart has the best deal, but Best Buy also has some. I think there's
>a list of approved stores on the website.
I know it's just a name that has been sold back and forth among many
manufacturers, but I still have trouble buying anything stamped
Maggotbox. Several of the online reviews I read gave slightly better
ratings to the DigitalStream box from RadioShack. It's only ten bucks
more.
Dennis (evil)
--
What government gives, it must first take away.
Logan Shaw
> No; I think you are describing classic aliasing raised to the enth
> power: Basically, missing information. Aliasing occurs anytime that
> inherently analog natural phenomena are digitized. For example, aliasing
> is what makes music CDs sound gritty and harsh. Aliasing is influenced
> by sampling rate, bit depth and data transmission rate, which often is
> erroneously called, "bandwidth".
I think what you're talking about is actually quantization, not aliasing,
but in any case what I was talking about is something different.
In digital TV, the picture is first digitized. Then the already-digital
data is compressed using an algorithm such as MPEG. (There are other
algorithms, but MPEG is very common, so I'll ignore the others.) MPEG
is lossy, which means that the decompression process doesn't restore all
the digital data that went into the compression process. One of the
things that MPEG does, in simple terms, is it breaks the picture down
into blocks. These blocks are larger than the size of a pixel; in fact,
they are 8 pixels wide by 8 pixels tall. And if the algorithm is cranked
down to try to achieve maximum compression (thus lowest cost of storing
and transmitting the data), these 8x8 blocks will be very, very obvious.
Pictures where the image is relatively still, like landscapes, are less
affected because they require less information to transmit (not as many
things changing at once) and fewer compromises are necessary to squeeze
the information into the available space. But with something like
sports, a lot of bad compromises have to be made by the MPEG encoder
to encode the picture. There is just too much information to cram in,
and some really important information gets thrown away, and thats when
the 8x8 blocks become obvious and in fact quite obnoxious.
> I was attempting to describe a picture that is unnaturally bright,
> "sharp", hard-edged and gritty. Interference and diffraction eliminate
> hard edges in visual reality (although, in many situations, the brain
> provides them) while they are present in virtually all graphics,
> regardless of medium.
Ah, it sounds like you are talking about something which is kind of
like film grain. If so, it turns out MPEG causes this as well.
You'll notice there is a lot of gritty stuff around hard edges. For
example, look at the hard edges of lettering. Or look at any sharply
delineated line. What's happening is that MPEG is trying to capitalize
on the fact that adjacent pixels are *usually* similar in brightness
(and hue and saturation) to each other. It takes less information to
represent a picture if you can do this. The problem is that when there
are sharp transitions along the vertical or horizontal axis, this
assumption breaks down. MPEG doesn't usually get it right. If you
look a few pixels out from the sharp edges, you will sometimes even
see an "echo" of the color transition. In almost all cases, you will
notice that the smooth areas are smooth, except for the areas near the
sharp transitions; these smooth areas are extra-grainy.
Again, 90% of these imperfections are a result of compromises in the
name of saving bandwidth, and thus money. MPEG can do pretty well given
reasonable constraints.
> Their presence is one of the visual cues that we
> use to differentiate between real and make-believe. For some reason,
> some people seem to want their teevees to look "better" than real which,
> I suppose, explains the spectre of misadjusted, garishly oversaturated,
> contrasty color sets that one encounters in living rooms everywhere.
Yes, I don't get why people like that, but they do. Perhaps it's for
the same reason that some people do that in the real world when they
wear way too much makeup. :-) At any rate, this can be really bad
on an analog TV as well. If you turn up the "color" knob really high,
you'll notice that the reds especially start to get really spasmodic.
I'm not an expert, but I believe you can actually overload some of the
circuits in your TV so that you get distortion in the reds akin to
what a distortion pedal does to an electric guitar. At any rate, it's
not very natural looking.
Getting back to digital TV, one of the weakness of LCDs is that they
don't really produce very good color, even when adjusted properly.
An LCD panel is really just a big sheet of millions of computer-controlled
shutters, so the quality of color they produce is dependent on the quality
of light coming through those shutters. And most LCD panels use fluorescent
lights for the backlight. So the quality of light from the LCD panel
is going to be inferior for the same reason that the quality of light
from a fluorescent bulb is inferior to an incandescent one. Some
manufacturers have models with LED backlights, and those are better,
but you're still starting with a source of light that isn't that great.
> I had always thought the inherent technical superiority of digital
> broadcasting was that it requires no bandwidth, resulting in greater
> signal propagation with far less power required.
There are a couple of areas where digital has advantages for broadcasting
TV signals. One is that it can correct for errors. You can send out a
bunch of bits that bear the actual information you want to send, and then
you can send out some additional bits that are there purely for error
detection and correction. If the receiver receives some of the main
signal wrong, it can draw on the additional information and reconstruct
the exact bits that it should have received. Up to a point. Eventually
its capacity to correct for problems gets completely overwhelmed and
then it fails catastrophically.
Another advantage is that once you have digital data, you can use lossy
compression algorithms, like MPEG, to save on bandwidth needs. You can
cut your bandwidth needs by a factor of 10 sometimes, and that's pretty
significant.
Also, better propagation is supposed to be an advantage of ATSC over
NTSC. From what I understand, it doesn't require as much power at the
transmitter to cover roughly the same area.
> Not particularly interested in cable, satellite, video disks, etc.
> I just want DW to be able to watch y&r with a minimum of crabbing about
> yet another technological "advance" that really has done nothing from
> this end-user's POV except provide another buying opportunity. In the
> best of all possible worlds, the loss of teevee broadcast signal would
> provide the impetus to remove the slime chute from my daily environment
> and, who knows, it may.
Well, you have every right not to be infatuated with technology!
Nevertheless, I personally think HDTV is a welcome change. I don't mind
paying a few bucks for a newer TV eventually, even though I will probably
mainly use it for watching movies (as I do now). I will, however, wait
until the prices come down. As impressive as some of these 52" flat
panel TVs are, I'm still not spending $3500 on one. Now, when a really
good TV like that hits $1000, then I might bite. My 27" plain old tube
TV was $300 about 7 years ago when I got it, so I don't think it's
unreasonable to spend $1000 for, if nothing else, a screen that's over
twice as big.
- Logan
lord202
James
expensive box gets better results than the cheap one from Walmart.
Dave
The short answer is NO.
With digital, you either have picture or you don't. There's no
"better" reception. The processing of the video information is where
quality differences would lie. That is, one box might OUTPUT better
quality picture than another. BUT, these boxes are meant to be used on
older analog television sets. If there is a difference in video
quality from one DTV converter box to another, it will not be
noticeable when the monitor being used is analog. -Dave
Dennis
Gotta disagree here. There are differences between the performance of
digital tuners built into different digital TVs and ATSC PC tuner
cards. In some cases, different tuners running side-by-side from the
same signal input can have significantly different performance. True,
once locked on a signal the pictures are the same, but one may hold a
given (marginal) station better, with fewer dropouts and glitches,
than the other.
I don't see why it would be any different with convertor boxes.
GordonD
My personal experience also bears this out. I've tried Zenith, Magnavox and
Dish (DTVPal) boxes and both picture quality and number of stations recieved
varies significantly. The difference is noticeable even on a 20" Sony TV. The
Zenith picture quality and reception is far better than the other two, the
Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
is about equal.
GordonD
Gary Heston
GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
[ ... ]
>My personal experience also bears this out. I've tried Zenith, Magnavox and
>Dish (DTVPal) boxes and both picture quality and number of stations recieved
>varies significantly. The difference is noticeable even on a 20" Sony TV. The
>Zenith picture quality and reception is far better than the other two, the
>Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
>is about equal.
What model Zenith converter box do you have?
Gary
--
Gary Heston ghe...@hiwaay.net http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/
"a member or members of Osama bin Ladens' Al Qaeda network, posing as
computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft..."
claim made by Mohammed Afroze Abdul Razzak to police in India, 12/01.
GordonD
>In article <48701715$0$10001$8ebe...@news.megabitz.net>,
>GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> [ ... ]
>>My personal experience also bears this out. I've tried Zenith, Magnavox and
>>Dish (DTVPal) boxes and both picture quality and number of stations recieved
>>varies significantly. The difference is noticeable even on a 20" Sony TV. The
>>Zenith picture quality and reception is far better than the other two, the
>>Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
>>is about equal.
>
>What model Zenith converter box do you have?
>
>
>Gary
>
The Zenith box is model DTT900 purchased at Circuit City.
GordonD
Dennis
>My personal experience also bears this out. I've tried Zenith, Magnavox and
>Dish (DTVPal) boxes and both picture quality and number of stations recieved
>varies significantly. The difference is noticeable even on a 20" Sony TV. The
>Zenith picture quality and reception is far better than the other two, the
>Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
>is about equal.
I have a DigitalStream converter (Radioshack) that works great. But I
have pretty strong signal/reception at my location (on a mountain top
with a straight shot to the towers, roof antenna, distribution
amplifier).
Dennis (evil)
--
I'm behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave,
dodging the bullet and pushing the envelope. -George Carlin
Gary Heston
GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>In article <T--dnaTPGKPupO3V...@posted.hiwaay2>,
>ghe...@hiwaay.net (Gary Heston) wrote:
>>In article <48701715$0$10001$8ebe...@news.megabitz.net>,
>>GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>> [ ... ]
>>>Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
>>>is about equal.
>>What model Zenith converter box do you have?
>The Zenith box is model DTT900 purchased at Circuit City.
Regrettably, neither it or the DTT901 (adds analog pass-through) are
available at any Circuit City stores within 80 miles of me.
Target has a GE box which is getting negative reviews (on their own
web site!) and a Venturer box which is cheaper and reportedly better.
Also came across a web site I hadn't seen that has an extensive list of
coupon-eligible boxes, plus a few non-eligible ones.
Speaking of which, anyone have any experience with any of these?
Grandtec Tun-5000
PHD-205
Samsung DTBH260F
Sylvania 6900DTE
Tivax STB-T1
Winegard RC-1010
GordonD
Yes the DTT900 does not have analog passthrough but from what I've read on the
Comparison of CECB units page on Wikipedia, the DTT901 does passthrough. Could
you be mistaken?
GordonD
Fake ID
>Dish (DTVPal) boxes and both picture quality and number of stations recieved
>varies significantly. The difference is noticeable even on a 20" Sony TV. The
>Zenith picture quality and reception is far better than the other two, the
>Dish has the poorest reception. Picture qulity between the Magnavox and Dish
>is about equal.
Kinda amusing since the DTVPal was so highly anticipated it developed a
cult-like following, but the Zenith was among the first offered. From
what I understand, the Insignia sold at Best Buy is essentially the same
as the Zenith.
m
Gary Heston
GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>In article <paCdnXr6jdq43-zV...@posted.hiwaay2>,
>ghe...@hiwaay.net (Gary Heston) wrote:
>>In article <4870d1da$0$80800$8ebe...@news.megabitz.net>,
>>GordonD <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>The Zenith box is model DTT900 purchased at Circuit City.
>>Regrettably, neither it or the DTT901 (adds analog pass-through) are
>>available at any Circuit City stores within 80 miles of me.
[ ... ]
>Yes the DTT900 does not have analog passthrough but from what I've read on the
>Comparison of CECB units page on Wikipedia, the DTT901 does passthrough. Could
>you be mistaken?
No, I'm quite certain that neither of them are available at any Circuit
City within 80 miles. However, the web site for H.H.Gregg claims their
local store has the DTT901 in stock, so I'll check with them.
Thanks,
wat...@moog.netaxs.com
We have a couple of them and the manuals state that if you want to get a
universal remote, be sure it has codes for LG and Zenith. I'm pretty sure
both the Zenith and Insignia convertors are made by LG.
W.