Digital TV Converter - 2 - The Digital Converter Box
Over the years I’ve accumulated a couple small, black and white portable tvs. These are usually my “storm”/power outage tvs just because I can move them to a place where their antenna should pull in a good signal. They’re also my favorites for this because it’s easy to power them from batteries or a car lighter socket. I like options…. So, this is what I have first tested with a digital converter box. This article will talk about the box and it’s features.
The box tested was a Magnavox TB100MW9. It’s a nice small box about the size of a smallish book ( a bit bigger than a paper back.) There is a hard power switch on the side, two coaxial cable plugs (output to tv/input from antenna), there is also a composite video and rca stereo jacks for output if you’re tv lacks a coax (cable) input.
The device also came with a remote control. Setup was very easy, plug the antenna in to the appropriate jack/ cable the box up to the tv/set the tv to channel 4 and power it on. (First switch on the hard power switch and then use the power button on the remote.) I should mention you better not loose that remote, there are no other buttons on the converter box.
Anyway, you are welcomed into the setup process which you essentially use the okay button for. It will ask about time zone settings and offer to autoscan channels for you. Depending on what it finds it will setup the channels and subchannels up and you can browse up or down once everything is completed.
Among the things I saw that I liked. When you can receive a channel the clarity is excellent. However, there are moments with the simple setup I used that remind me of a bad cell phone connection or a bad web video, drops and stutters. The cheap indoor antenna and converter box combination was very tricky for me to get a solid stream. As I discussed last time we are in a mountainous area and face the “wrong direction” from our local town. I was able to sort of get WLOS 13 and it’s sub channels, but I question if the reception was enough to really tolerate watching an entire news cast. The stutters and dropped audio are almost every sentence. I don’t place the blame on the converter box, but on our location and reception conditions. (I’ll talk about the antenna in the next article.)
In addition to 13 WLOS, I was able to receive Channel 39 from Greeneville TN (WEMT) and a subchannel (one hd one sd). I JUST received enough information from our local PBS (33 WUNF) to have the device setup the subchannels and show us one or two frames of video, butI was reminded of the bad old antenna days as I carefully and slowly moved around the room with the antenna trying to find a better spot, then backing up to see if I had just past a better spot. That surely brings back memories.
Okay, so for the channels that I could receive (the best of the lot were the FOX affiliate in Tennessee (39 WMET). I was able to choose audio channels via the remote (although there wasn’t an alternate stream I was pleased to see that as a possibility. Closed captioning is also possible (you can even edit the style of text with this magnavox tb100mw9.) Also, there is extended program information available through which the channels are broadcasting the information about each program as well as what’s coming up in the next few hours. For those of you with digital cable this will seem quite familiar.
So, at this point is it an improvement? Yes and no. Let me put it this way, comparing a cheap internal antenna for analog here in the mountains before to a cheap internal antenna for digital here in the mountains I would say the analog would win because ghosting or not/static or not I still could have heard ALL of a local news broadcast. I suspect with a real antenna this will be a big improvement over where we used to be, but with just the cheap indoors antenna it’s a great deal more frustrating experience.
Does that mean “digital is lousy” no - it means that uhf propagation in our area is poor - we’re in the mountains a unidirectional antenna is a poor choice for uhf reception - we need something very directional that can null out reflections. Of course if we lived on top of a mountain overlooking Asheville we’d probably have GREAT digital reception because we’d probably be pulling in many of the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg/Greeneville(TN) stations. But that geography is working against us at the moment.
We’ve always been a fringe area for UHF/VHF reception and digital hasn’t changed that, it has instead put more emphasis on getting a good antenna setup. I suspect with the right antenna we would be able to pull in more channels than we used to with more clarity than we ever would have DREAMED in the old analog days.
With regards to the converter box, it cost $49 at Walmart - so… after the coupon it was a $9 digital converter box, I know some places sell them for upwards of $60. The antenna was a cheap vhf/uhf combo ($2-5)
