Terrestrial HDTV Receivers--any recommended?
Our big screen in the HT room gets very little use with most DirecTV programming...most non-HD channels just look plain ugly, and we use it primarily for movies. It's just over 4 years old, so it came from the "HD Ready" era, and does not include an over-the-air digital or HD tuner. We now have a 2004 vintage Samsung DirecTV HD receiver with the input for a terrestrial antenna, along with a decent UHF antenna. We live close enough to Chicago that over-the-air HD is far superior to that over DirecTV (which is obviously compressed and thus loses a lot in comparison.)
I was thinking about dropping DirecTV in that room and simply getting an HD terrestrial tuner, but there don't seem to be a lot out there--the Samsung DTBH260F seems to be the most commonly listed unit, sometimes the only one sold by online vendors.
I am not a big fan of Samsung TV tuners, as we've had to replace several of the non-HD Samsung DirecTV boxes in other room over the past few years just after warranty expiration (of course.) The Samsung DirecTV HD/terrestrial HD box has always run very hot and seems to lose programming info much more often than the non-HD boxes.
The DTBH260F sells for $170-$180, but in reviewing our DirecTV monthly bill, we pay $51 for Total Choice, $10 for the "original" DirecTV HD package with maybe 8 channels, plus $5 each for the other two boxes. It appears that I'd only save $15 per month by dropping the HD service and box, so there's a one year payback on buying the DTBH260F. But given our poor experience, I fear that the DTBH260F might not last all that long.
Any recommendations for a different, or cheaper, terrestrial HD tuner? I'm not interested in a TiVo, DVR, or anything like that--we just aren't hard core TV people any more!
Last edited by sejarzo; 04-15-2008 at 02:04 PM..
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