[drh4683]

Marty, thanks for the link for the channel master. I'll have to pick up a couple from them. As long as I know its NIB and not "unpackaged for testing" like on ebay, I'm happy(er).

I tried out the apex box last night. Its very cheap, the F-61 connectors don't even protrude squarely from the back of the box, and I think the OD must be slightly smaller than it should be as my cables don't connect very securely to them. I do like the conservative plain design of it though, no crazy annoying led's etc to be distracting.

I wasn't too impressed with the channel guide display. The wording is extremely small, as displayed on a 25" Zenith chromacolor. Even then, when you press the arrow keys on the remote, which is also very cheap, its hard to tell what is highlighed because the wording is very light blue, and when the info you've selected is highlighted, its white. Very hard to distingush between what you have highlighed vs. whats displayed on the screen.

The worst part is the sound output is extremely low! With my channel master CM-7000, it put out plenty of sound, same with the zenith/insignia box. I had to crank up the volume on my zenith (25DC56, horizontal solid state chassis) to get a good volume with this apex thing, and yes, the volume was maximum output on the converter box.

Another dissapointment was its ability to receive channels indicating strong signal strength. I have an outdoor antenna w/ rotator. With my LG boxes and the CM box, I can easily get "100%" reception on all of the major networks. With this apex, I'm getting like 80%-85% signal strength, and on other channels, reception is so poor that there is constant pixelation and black outs, which are virtually non-existant on the CM and LG boxes.

Quite a dissapointment. I'll have to pick up one of those digital streams at RS, Ive heard good things about those and from my understanding, they don't get burning hot either.

As I've said before, I like the channel master box best, good quality (not made in china either which is a huge surprise, they're made in Bulgaria so perhaps there was some quality control when they built those) and I like the remote control layout/design.