Digital TV Converter Boxes -- One Year Later

Entry for March 09, 2008

I've been spending a lot of time this week and especially this weekend, locating converter boxes for my Analog TV set and several VCRs. I wanted to try several brands, so that there would be as little code overlap for the Remote Controls as possible. My findings in the Chicago area (Southwest Suburbs) are as follow.

Zenith's unit (bought at Circuit City) worked just fine. Insignia and GE (Digital Stream) units were OK. The GE Unit (bought at Radio Shack) gets the best reception with a normal amplified antenna (nothing special), and Insignia (bought at Best Buy) is about the same as Zenith. (In fact, the Zenith and Insignia units share the same Remote Codes.) Magnavox (from Wal Mart) is unacceptable. Terrible sensitivity and poor outputs. CBS-DT (Channel 3 around here) has terrible reception, probably due to signal-bounce and its relatively long wavelength. WTTW (Channel 11, and its sub-channels) offers the best use of its digital allocation, having four distinct channels of digital content, only one of which duplicates its analog counterpart. And ABC-7-DT does the best job of presenting 24-hour news and weather/traffic information. Even distant Channel 56-DT (Indiana) comes in pretty well sometimes on some antennas.

Antennas also make a difference. The best results are in locatins free of nearby metal or thick masonry. (Metal reflects signals, causing interference, and masonry can block signals.) The exact angle of the antenna is important, and amplification is recommended at most distances from the signal sources. The antenna needs to be strongly directional and discrete, rejecting competing signals. And both VHF and UHF will be used after the completion of the Digital TV Transition. But Channels 2, 3, 4 and 5 VHF will no longer be used (thank god!). Rescanning for channels after June 12, 2009 will be necessary.

What I need now are some extra coaxial switches, and maybe a new antenna or two, and I should be set up for the DTV conversion mid-year (2009). Recordings of the downconverted analog outputs on VCRs work just fine, especially with Composite (RCA) connections (Line In). April 30, 2009: Note that VCRs with tuners are no longer available in the USA.

One annoying thing about these tuners is that they do not change channels at specified future times, so timed recordings have to be set up on one channel per device only. I recently (March, 2009) found the TiVo Pal at my local K Mart. This unit uses the TiVo Guide but does not require the use of the TiVo Subscription Service, and can be timed to tune to a specific event, channel and all, and to switch channels for each event. Same price as the non-programmable ones, too. This is what I wish I had gotten for all of my VCRs. On the other hand, stand-alone VCRs are not being sold in the USA anymore, so I think time-shifting without a subscription service may be on its way out. That would be a dark day for consumer freedoms in the USA.

So that's it for now. More on DTV later, as I discover more.

(Edited Mon., March 10, 2008 by LittleWolf )

(Edited Thurs., April 30, 2009 by LittleWolf)

Sunday March 9, 2008 - 05:40pm (CDT)

Edited by LittleWolf Thursday, April 30, 2009, 2:20 PM CDT