Digital to analog TV signal converter - which one?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Unless you have small community broadcasters who are exempt from digital.

I've settled on the Digital Stream converter for "live" TV viewing as it works well and has a decent program guide. The very first converter I purchased was a Zenith, which also works very well but has a minimal program guide.

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.)

Dish Network's DTVPal supposedly offers it all -- comprehensive program guide, timers, etc., but those units have suffered from a large number of problems and Dish Network's support of them has been horrid. Supposedly the units with the latest firmware are OK, but it really seems to be "caveat emptor" with that outfit. See the following for DTVPal horror stories:

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.

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.)

My $0.02 worth...

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.

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

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.

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".

The only other one that I am aware of is the Dish Network "DTVPal" line of converters, and as previously mentioned there have been a lot of problems both with the converters and Dish Network's abysmal support.

The Zinwell converters have had a few issues documented, but nothing real serious -- they basically "just work." Solid Signal has the ZATs for $45.99 each, plus shipping:

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.