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Electronics Repair (sci.electronics.repair) Discussion of repairing electronic equipment. Topics include requests for assistance, where to obtain servicing information and parts, techniques for diagnosis and repair, and annecdotes about success, failures and problems. |
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#1
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the
program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. WT |
#2
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Wayne Tiffany wrote:
The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. I have been testing the Insignia STB; I am very pleased with its multipath mitigation processing. Using various antennas and antenna locations and positions I find that it produces consistently unbroken reception from signals that on an analog set show noise and ghosting, especially on UHF. In my area, the antenna farm concentrates dozens of towers and high power radiators on a high hillside, creating an RF soup, and multipath is a problem due to topography. This STB exceeded my expectations and is far superior to one that I tested from a first-gen batch from another maker. FWIW, I have been using the STB as a local NTSC sync source to genlock other gear and it is continuously powered and provides a reliable signal. Michael |
#3
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
On Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:31:18 -0600, "Wayne Tiffany"
wrote: The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. I ended up with the Insignia NS-DXA1-APT. Works fine with just a loop antenna from about 20 miles out from the antenna farm (and looking across The World's Largest Naval Station (TM)). YMMV and probably will. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CECB_units -- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA |
#4
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Wayne Tiffany wrote:
The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. The Samsung unit is *NOT* a converter, but is a full-function HDTV receiver. It has digital outputs - including HDMI - and is meant for delivering SD and HD digital signals to a digital monitor that is lacking a tuner. This unit should *NOT* be presented along with the digital-analog converters. |
#5
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
UCLAN wrote:
Wayne Tiffany wrote: The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. The Samsung unit is *NOT* a converter, but is a full-function HDTV receiver. It has digital outputs - including HDMI - and is meant for delivering SD and HD digital signals to a digital monitor that is lacking a tuner. This unit should *NOT* be presented along with the digital-analog converters. I have an Insignia from BB and a DigitalStream from RadioShack. They both work acceptably well in a hilly, multipath prone area with an old outside antenna. The major difference is the remote - the Insignia came with what I consider a crummy remote. It's too small and all of the buttons are black. The DS remote is larger and has various colored buttons which makes it much easier to use. Jerry |
#6
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Wayne Tiffany wrote:
The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. Out here it was "get it while there is stock". Seriously, the clerk at Walmart told me that if I am not there minutes after the truck has been unloaded it may be too late. So, no dice there, too long a drive. Unless you'd camp out with a thermos when there is a hunch the truck might arrive tomorrow. So, we bought two Insignia $60 boxes. They work fine. Keep in mind that these (at least ours) do not have analog pass-through. Meaning you will not have any analog channels after you pipe it in. Later I heard they had some with pass-through but since those cards expire in three months we had to buy the millisecond a shipment showed up. Any shipment. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM. |
#7
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
"Wayne Tiffany" wrote in message ... The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. WT The Insignia is OK (I have one - bought at Best Buy), but I believe the main difference among the boxes is the TV programming guide options. The Insignia shows only the next few hours of programming - other brands will show much more in advance with alot more features. Try to view the boxes in action and play with the menus before buying. No pass thru? No big deal, I just switch connectors if I have to - is pretty much irrelevant after Feb unless you have some sort of DVD - VCR setup that requires it. |
#8
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Gizmofiddler wrote:
"Wayne Tiffany" wrote in message ... The time has come here in the midwest USA for me to finally get with the program and decide on a converter before my "gift" card expires. A quick search of Best Buy web site brings up three: Apex for $50, Insignia for $60, and Samsung for $180. Are there opinions out there as to reasons to pick one of these, or something else not found here, or whatever? Any reason not to grab the cheap one? I know Apex isn't a high quality brand, but is Insignia any better than Apex? I'm not spending $180 on a converter - not worth it to me. WT The Insignia is OK (I have one - bought at Best Buy), but I believe the main difference among the boxes is the TV programming guide options. The Insignia shows only the next few hours of programming - other brands will show much more in advance with alot more features. Try to view the boxes in action and play with the menus before buying. Menus are wrong a lot anyhow. The topper: I was looking forward to a western and a different movie played. Some stupid thriller. The menu still showed the western while (!) the wrong and totally unannounced movie played. Not worth it IMHO. No pass thru? No big deal, I just switch connectors if I have to - is pretty much irrelevant after Feb unless you have some sort of DVD - VCR setup that requires it. Unless you have small community broadcasters who are exempt from digital. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM. |
#9
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
I bought a Zenith earlier this year, based on some Web reviews. It's a snap
to set up (it does almost all the setting up for you), EZUU, and the picture quality is good. However, as others have pointed out, digital is not a panacea for any and all reception problems. You have to have a strong, reasonably clean signal. |
#10
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
"Roger Blake" wrote in message ... On 2008-11-20, Wayne Tiffany wrote: For taping/time-shifting I'm using Zinwell ZAT-970A converters which have a timer feature useful for VCRs. You can set up to 8 timers to automatically wake up the converter if it on standby and tune in the desired channel. (Though the ZAT-970A is otherwise pretty bare-bones.) -- Roger Blake (Subtract 10s for email. "Google Groups" messages killfiled due to spam.) That's what I was hoping for - a converter that would still let me use the programmed vcr. Does anyone know of others out there? WT |
#11
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Roger Blake wrote:
[...] The problem you'll find with all of this is that the digital signal does not degrade gracefully. Where before you might have gotten a little snow or ghosting you will now get freezing, pixelization, audio dropouts, and bad lip synch, all of which conspire to make programs unwatchable. We've adopted the habit of recording things and then spooling forward almost to the end to see if the recording stuck. Nothing is more aggravating in TV watching than having a great movie pixelate and drop out after having seen half of it. So, you end up recording stuff you normally would watch live, meaning all that DTV is being rendered in good old low-res NTSC just like before. Progress? Yeah, right. After installing a Winegard pre-amp on our rooftop antenna and new RG6 cabling, reception is mostly OK but there are still annoying dropouts at times. Rotating the antenna sometimes helps, but it is difficult to find a position where all of the digital stations will work acceptably well. (None of this was a problem with analog reception. I personally believe digital TV to be a dirtbag technology but we are unfortunately stuck with it.) I tend to agree. Beaucoup dropping out of the signals out here. It's like "Hey, clouds are rolling in so we might as well forget watching that movie tonight and do something else". [...] -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM. |
#12
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Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?
Joerg wrote: Gizmofiddler wrote: The Insignia is OK (I have one - bought at Best Buy), but I believe the main difference among the boxes is the TV programming guide options. The Insignia shows only the next few hours of programming - other brands will show much more in advance with alot more features. Try to view the boxes in action and play with the menus before buying. Menus are wrong a lot anyhow. The topper: I was looking forward to a western and a different movie played. Some stupid thriller. The menu still showed the western while (!) the wrong and totally unannounced movie played. Not worth it IMHO. That may have been the station's fault. Last minute program changes have happend since the earlist use of a film chain. Sometimes their automated system doesnt record the program. or the storage media fails. They cant have an hour or more of no programming, so something the right length is substituted. BTDT, and got the angry phone calls about it. No pass thru? No big deal, I just switch connectors if I have to - is pretty much irrelevant after Feb unless you have some sort of DVD - VCR setup that requires it. Unless you have small community broadcasters who are exempt from digital. http://www.grimmy.com/comics.php Look at the 11/20/08 strip. ;-) -- http://improve-usenet.org/index.html aioe.org, Goggle Groups, and Web TV users must request to be white listed, or I will not see your messages. If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm There are two kinds of people on this earth: The crazy, and the insane. The first sign of insanity is denying that you're crazy. |
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