best place to get a dtv box using govt. coupon? (and which dtv conversion box to get)

[Tom E.]

and ability to set timers for future programs

Does this mean I can set it to switch channels at a selected date/time?

I'm currently sending my DTV converter through a Series 1 TiVo, and I have to make sure the converter is set to the correct channel when program the TiVo to record something.

[tjlid]

Originally Posted by Tom E.

Does this mean I can set it to switch channels at a selected date/time?

Yes! You can also set each (max = 5) timers duration and it's frequency to once, Mon-Fri, daily or weekly. However, timers don't work properly when your local stations don't transmit the time of day accurately. More discussion on that is here.

[Tom E.]

I've still got one coupon left, so I think I'll give the DTVPal a try.

Thanks!

Tom

[Jeff]

Got a DTVPal by dish network dtv converter box today (about $30 shipped with the $40 coupon applied.) The bad news: it finds 0 channels and when scanning channels with the antenna point all show 0 percent signal strength (the book says a value under 54 will cause picture problems.) This is with our roof antenna that gets the three networks via analogue as well as PBS and two stations out of canada. I also tried a pair of rabbit ears thinking at least I would get some signal strength to register, but all still show 0. So either I got a dud, or there is something I didn't understand about antenna requirements...

[Jeff]

Took 30 minutes on the phone with dish to get a replacement box supposedly being sent out. Now three weeks later the replacement still hasn't arrived. Looks like dish ripped me and the government off

[Jeff]

I've now been using a second DTV Box, an RCA DTA800B1 which unlike the Dish DTVpal which gets 0 channels, does actually receive 7 DTV channels here... on a perfect weather day. When analog TV is as clear as it gets, the DTV has little advantage to my eye. Now when analog TV is at the 90%-95% perceptual quality mark, the DTV is noticeably better. But the drawback seems to be than when analog TV is between 50 and 90% quality (watchable but with some snow or lines in the picture, etc.) the DTV studders which is extremely annoying, gets JPEG-like color squares, or just drops out. Out of the three "local" network stations here or four if you include fox, only one (the CBS station) comes in reliably. It's too bad that more robustness / error handling wasn't built into the DTV system design -- I would have expected that in 2008 we could have delivered a digital broadcast standard that was as robust as the analogue standard it replaced.

If dish ever sends out the replacement RMA dtvpal it will be interesting to see if it does any better.

For the $80 of coupons and $75 of cash invested in these dtv boxes so far, it would have made more sense to me if the govt. just subsidized sending everyone dishes and the basic networks since they're already being broadcast over the US anyway via satellite so there wouldn't be any real per-subscriber cost to dish or directv, it would be much more robust signal than this dtv signal that doesn't seem to really work at distance, and I would think dish/directv would have loved it as a way to get the equipment into every house in America so people could even more easily "upgrade" to pay tv at a moment's notice. But I suppose even freeing up the analog and dtv spectrums, there still wouldn't be enough satellite bandwidth spectrum to include every local channel's local programming hours that way so it would have left the small guys out, though I suspect if the dtv system doesn't improve, their radius will be shrinking noticeably anyway come February.

[Kevin]

That is my experience with DTV as well. It either comes in perfectly or not at all. Certainly not something you want to rely on during a hurricane