OTA HD Tuners

[Arge]

Folks, I'm looking for some forum guidance.  I have a Sony 53" HD ready rear projection.  Last year I got rid of my TWC HD box after football so I could reduce my cable bill from $59/mo. to $12 (just the basics now).  While I miss ESPN and some of the others, I love my cost reduction.  I'm looking to get an OTA HD tuner but I'm not finding much out there.  Any suggestions of where or what I should be looking for?  If there are two companies I hate paying more than I need, it's AT&T  and TWC!
Thanks, Arge.

[AndrewP]

Look for old Voom box @ eBay. Pay attention, that box was activated by Voom, otherwise you are out of luck. Very good OTA HD tuner.
Cons: no EPG guide.
I had two of them and both are borrowed by friends.

[waterhead]

I was at Best Buy last week and noticed that they now have a Samsung HDTV tuner. I don't need one, so I didn't look too close. The salesman did mention that it has a HDMI output (mine doesn't), and it is alot smaller than my Samsung SIR-T451. I got mine at Circuit City.

[SRW1000]

There are supposed to be some models coming out shortly that have built in DVD recorders.  And while they won't record in HD, they are supposed to record anamorphic 480p, which isn't horrible.

Considering that the prices are going to be around $200, it's a pretty good deal compared to just a stand alone tuner.

Here's an AVS Forum thread on them.

Scott

[Jerlind24]

Check out eBay for Samsung SIR-TS360 receivers.  They are Direct TV but will work for OTA HDTV>
You can get for under $50.00 if you keep watching.

[brewtownska]

I can agree with the Samsung 360's being a good deal on Ebay (I bought one there 2 years ago).  The only extra piece of info I'll throw at you if you buy one (same with the Samsung 160) is that if the previous owner used it with DirecTV and left those settings on when in last use, you need an access card to change the box settings to say NO DISH before it'll work properly.  I was able to just borrow an unused card from a friend to change the settings.  Once you change to NO DISH, the box never needs an access card again.  I know there are many different versions of access card...I have no idea if some versions work for this and others don't, but it's worth a try considering how cheap they are.

Mike

[FiberOptic]

Is there a big difference between the 160 and 360 if all I want to use is the OTA

[brewtownska]

Others may be able to chime with things I don't know about on these, but the one thing I *DO* know that I personally like on the 360 vs the 160 is the order of the channels when changed.  The channels on both boxes show up as their re-mapped channel names (4-1, 6-1, 12-1, etc), but on the 160 box when you use the channel up and down buttons, the channels change in the order of their UHF channel frequencies...which don't match to the 4-1, 6-1, 12-1 order.  The 360 box WILL change them in the logical order, so hitting up from 4-1 will get you to 6-1 then 12-1.
The other thing that is nice on the 360 if you have a need for it is that you can connect a device to a set of component inputs on the back and it will output that to whatever resolution currently set.  So I think it could take in your 480i/p from a DVD player and output that to 720p or 1080i.  I don't use this, so I can't comment on how well it works or any quirks to it, but I saw it in the manual.

I think the prices between the 2 boxes probably aren't much difference, so I'd go with the 360.  Plus, I think there are a LOT of them out there because that was the box DirecTV pushed to a lot of customers looking for HD.

Oh, I remember reading there is a little bug in how it processes 720p on some of the direcTV channels (I think ESPN-HD, maybe another), but this won't affect you at all if you are doing OTA like me.

Mike