My first experiences with Digital TV...

[RetroHacker]

Well, I know that this is starting to become and old subject here, but I figured I'd post about it anyway. I got my $40 off coupons finally, so I went down to Radio Shack and bought a converter box. It's a DigitalStream, and it's supposed to have the same LG chipset that the Zenith does. With the coupon (and after tax), it cost me about $25.

It's a small black box, about the size of a VHS tape. It has a coaxial screw-on type antenna connector and an RF output, as well as stereo and composite video outputs. It even came with a short coaxial cable. I connected it to a 19" color TV. I disconnected the TV's rabbit ears from the set, and hooked them up to the DTV box's input. I had to be a bit creative on the wiring, since the wires are only long enough to reach from inside the set, out, and to the VHF terminals on the back. I connected the DTV box up to the TV's VHF input, set the TV to channel 3, and turned everything on.

After stepping through the setup on the box, it scanned the channels, and found 7 digital stations. After I got the antenna adjusted for the strongest signal, I was pleasantly surprised by how clear and sharp the picture was, and how well everything worked. I even discovered a subchannel called "RetroTV", that was playing a rerun of one of my favorite shows - "Get Smart". The box seemed to work very well, the remote is pretty nice (it even came with batteries!), and the box does everything it's supposed to. There are a couple of oddities though:

-The box has a little red light that lights up to tell you that it's off. When the box is on, this light is green.

-The audio output from the box isn't particularly strong. It's OK, but with the volume control on the box up all the way, it's not as loud as the TV snow that you get when the box is shut off. So, shutting off the box before the TV produces a very loud blast of snow.

-The box takes a while to "boot". Once again, if you turn the set on first, then the box, you'll get blasted with static.

-The box doesn't change channels quite as fast as a regular TV can. I guess this is to be expected, and at least this box works MUCH faster than my old digital cable box did. Still, it takes a second for the picture to appear. Makes sense though, it has to lock in on the signal and start decoding the digital.

-The coaxial cable that comes with the box is crap. If you use it to connect the box to the TV set, you get snow in the picture. Using a better cable gets rid of this problem.

-The box does not come with any antenna adapters. I have extras, so it's not a big deal. But it would be nice if they included the 75 ohm to 300 ohm matching transformers to connect the output of the box to the back of the TV, or from the antenna to the box.

-It would have been really nice if they had put a switched outlet on the back of the box to plug the TV set into. That way, you'd only have to switch off/on the box. It would also get around the problem of the box taking a second to "boot up" - you woudn't notice, since the TV would be warming up too. It shouldn't be too hard for me to add this capability though - a relay and a power socket is all that's needed.

-A channel display on the box would have also been a nice touch. But, you can't have everything.


All in all, it seems to work well. Once more stations are broadcasting in digital, there will be more to watch with it. Right now I get seven channels, but it's really only three or four different RF channels, a couple of them have subchannels. Reception around here isn't normally very good, and I could only get three or four channels on VHF, and if I was lucky, another three on UHF. With the digital, there is a definite possibility of more good programming, and mroe stations. The only problem is that with the digital - it either works perfectly, or it's totally unwatchable. If the antenna is adjusted wrong, the picture breaks up and the sound stops.

-Ian