HDTV Review
admin May 3rd, 2008
I recently got a Zenith DTT900 Digital TV Tuner Converter Box. After rebate it cost me about $25 at Radio Shack. I live west of Houston in a rural area where my only option for TV is over the air or satellite. I use to have Primestar but when they were bought out by Direct TV I dropped the service. I still miss ESPN and Speedvision but not the $60 a month I was paying. So I’ve been using an outdoor antenna and a few years ago subscribed to Netflix for movies. I should also mention that I have a 12 year old 27″ Sony TV in my living room, and it’s my only TV. I have a lousy DVD player and a VCR. For the big sound I use a Marantz stereo receiver. I’m mostly happy with this setup and not inclined to spend money just to upgrade.
Enough, here goes the review…opening the box and take out the Zenith converter. Small and nice, a few cables and yet another remote. I’m pretty low tech here so why do I have five remotes? I follow the Quick Connect instructions, and it is as easy as could be expected. I had a couple of problems related to my equipment. I needed a short antenna wire, and not recognizing Zenith’s supplied cable I decided to disconnect my antenna amplifier and plug directly into the box. That was a mistake, as during the initial scan, I found only 9 channels. This was my worse fear. I stayed cool and checked it out anyways. First thing I noticed was the lousy sound quality. There was an audible hum even when the volume was low. When I turned on my DVD player the broadcast channels interfered. the VCR was fine.
So I decided to change it around a little. First I switched the converter box to run off of channel 4 instead of 3. That didn’t help, but moving the box input from the Video-2 to Video-3 solved my DVD problem. My VCR was plugged into Video-3 so now I don’t have a VCR. I thought my TV had 3 inputs, but I’m guessing that S-Video and Video-2 are actually the same, just different connections. I don’t use my VCR much so I’ll deal with it later. Now my DVD player doesn’t interfere with broadcast channels and my sound is better, but still I hear an audible hum from having the volume set high on the TV.
I look around for a short piece of antenna wire to hook up my booster amp and found the one supplied by Zenith, guess I should read the instructions better. With it all hooked up properly I scan again for channels and pull in about 26 channels. Which includes all the channels I normally watch. I loose a few channels, most of which I don’t watch anyways. I did gain some new channels, a religious channel and PAX. Some channels broadcast extra channels, but three of them are weather channels, and two are spanish language.
The picture quality is better in that some channels, especially like KPRC channel 2 was always snowy and some of the UHF channels were bad depending on the weather. Now if a channel comes in it’s clear, but I do get pixelation and sometimes the channels stop for a second and then resume. Some go away all together. Especially channel 55 PAX, it’s very weak.
I’ve got the sound to work okay, but I don’t notice any improvement. Now my only complaint is having an extra remote and how turning on the TV and moving thru channels is a bit more confusing and slower. The channel guide is okay but really not that helpful. Overall the Zenith is good enough and works as promised. My only suggestion is that it adopt a more green attitude and power itself completly off. As far as HDTV goes, I could live without it. Yea maybe when my existing TV dies and I do buy a new larger plasma I’ll enjoy it more. High definition DVDs might be worth it, but so far I’m unimpressed. Check back in a couple of years and ask me again, maybe I’ll change my mind.
