Digital Converter Boxes

[blue_lateral]

Hello Everyone,

I have a some questions for those of you who bought TV converter boxes with a coupon.

You may wonder why I am asking now. Our situation here is a little different than most areas. Every station here is either a translator, or low power. Under the rules, all of them were exempt from the changeover deadline. Eventually they will be required to convert. One station here has a build permit from the FCC for a digital installation. As far as I know, they haven't started yet. We are surrounded by mountains, and as of right now there are no digital signals available over the air. Not one.

I waited as long as I could to request the coupons. I applied in the last few days of the program. Now the coupons are about to expire. We will need converters here, analog is going away, just not yet. When I get these things home, I wont even be able to test them.

I am now wondering what you think of the one you bought.

I have two coupons. One box will be for the living room. Analog pass through needs to work on this one, because at first there will be only one digital signal. The second box will be my workshop's cable system. It is currently fed by an old VCR acting as an NTSC tuner. I use this for working on vintage tv sets, so decent video and sound is important. Analog pass through would be nice, but not absolutely necessary. It does need to work well with older sets, because that is what it will be used for.

I don't think I need 12v capability, but If you have one of those, I would still like to hear about it's performance.

So... Here's the laundry list of questions. What model do you have and how do you like it? Does it have analog pass-through? Does your sound work right on an early set? How is the video quality? Is the sound in sync? Did it break after two weeks? What sort of output jacks does it have? Has your opinion changed after living with it a while?

Any advice would be appreciated....

Thanks,

John