Home Theaters

When I started thinking about this, I was sure that everyone who was interested in quality reproduction (home theater) would have no need, as they would have purchased a large screen that already had an ATSC (read digital) tuner, built in. Then I started thinking about some of the televisions I have seen friends and family buy in the last few years, and realized that many did not. Some have televisions that used a modular approach, saying that when the DTV format was finalized, the tuner module for that would be available. As anyone who pays attention knows, these sort of promises usually go unfulfilled. Other televisions were sold with the ability to do a high resolution (for the time) but with an analog tuner only. Still others were those sets that were sold as computer monitors, with an NTSC (read analog) tuner included, and no provision to remove the analog tuner, and replace it with an ATSC model.

Further, there are those who have a smaller set in a bedroom, with a nice audio system connected, and no problem with the idea of high quality SD (standard definition) in that room. Another group of people will be those who don’t wish to throw out a perfectly good television, for reasons of being green (I’m certainly in this group, as there are 3 televisions in this house that have really fine SD pictures).

A word now about a few things. First, there is a website established, as well as a toll-free number available, for getting the coupons to help defray the cost of the purchase. Each address is able to request 2 coupons, which are worth $40 dollars, making the purchase less a problem for the less than wealthy. Next, there are supposed to be tens of manufacturers for these digital converter boxes, yet I could find mentions of 5 manufacturers, and 9 models total, in a somewhat exhaustive search on Google. Hardly the turn out predicted by the Consumer Electronics Show, this last January. Last, it has been estimated that there might be a shortage of these boxes, mostly by the manufacturers, who are probably hoping to gain a sale of a more expensive television, if they artificially create a shortage situation. I’m fairly certain some consumer group will come up with a class action lawsuit concerning lack of a product made necessary by a government mandate.

  the RCA offering, pictured both horizontally, and vertically, with remote

the Magnavox offering

  one of the 2 choices from GE (other than the aggressively ugly looks, it should be almost identical to the RCA and Magnavox boxes, as they all are trademarks owned by Thomson Electronics)

Another thing to think about is the Consumer Reports article that compares the units available. They choose the RCA, but the reasoning is not clear why the choice is made. More telling is that many comments were made on that article, with one standing out for me. Apparently most of the units do not allow analog pass thru of signals, so using those boxes daisy-chain style (like many people used to do with VCRs) is not possible. This is possibly (well, probably) a cost consideration, but I prefer to think that it forces many to use the non-RF connections found on every box, to achieve the best picture quality, and by pass what must be an incredibly cheap RF modulator.

There are the choices currently available from Echo Star, Zenith, and a little known company called Insignia, but no pictures or fact sheets could be found on them. As Echo Star gets some of its stuff from Thomson, the EchoStar  units are probably very close, if not identical to one of the known Thomson models.

The only thing to distinguish the aggressively ugly GE model, other than aesthetics, is the fact that it purports to have Dolby Surround outputs. That would certainly mitigate the ugliness, if the output quality was good.

the government issued cards to help with converter box purchase

Unless you are wanting to get the digital content immediately, I would recommend waiting to let a few more models come to market, and perhaps a few problematic models will be removed from the market. For those wishing to buy immediately, get your card(s), and purchase on features, as there doesn’t seem to be much difference in performance - so its standard or Dolby audio that makes the difference.

-