William R. Walsh wrote:
I actually called Zenith today about this problem. Of course,
it wasn't long into the call that I was told "By the way, we
don't support this product anymore".

I don't know. I find it surprising...but I've been inside mine and
found that it has a flash ROM in place. It stands alone as the only
converter box I've seen with one. I'm not sure how you'd deliver
updated code to it, but they could fix the problem if they really
wanted to. Maybe they'd do it over the air?

The Tivax has an externally accessible port (serial?)
to update the flash it has. Of course, there is no guarantee
that anyone has ever debugged the flash update code (though
I can't believe they would have gone through the expense
of adding the extra connector if the interface didn't at least
APPEAR to work).

I never had any expectation that the manufacturer would
provide new flash images. However, I had hoped that the
presence of the connector might entice someone to hack the
box (since hardware accessibility seems to be the thing
that inhibits most would-be hackers)

The software seems pretty badly designed. Anyone else
noticed these problems?

Yes, but they are definitely caused by stations broadcasting
inaccurate time information. This messes up the program guide. If it
bothers you, I think the only real fix is to complain to the stations
that are broadcasting improper time data.

I suspect there is fault on both sides. I look at the
design of the user interface in most of the converter
boxes I evaluated and found they all seemed to have been
"designed on the back of a napkin". And, often seem like they
*assume* the broadcasts would be perfect, available 100%
of the time, etc.

If I remember things right, there is a manual clock set function on
the DTT-900/DTT-901. You could always try it and see...

After auditioning a lot of converter boxes, I found things that I
didn't like about each one. In the end, I thought the Magnavox CECB
was probably the best of any of them, although its feature set was a
bit thin. The Zenith/LG unit came in second.

I actually drew up some crude designs for one of my own that solved
all the shortcomings I saw in each unit. Of course, given how
perfection is a secondary goal any more (if it even makes the list!),
and how practically everything comes in from overseas, I'd expect that
it wouldn't stand a chance if marketed on quality of experience
alone...and there's so much I don't know how to do anyway.