Accessories

Good reception but very buggy
Not wanting to pay for poor local cable service, I put up a rooftop antenna and used this tuner with an older 720p LCD TV. Set-up was a brick wall at first because the manual isn't very useful. Finding auto-scan got things going. An online web site translating DTV to channel frequencies helped in manually adding channels that needed antenna rotation.

HDTV colors are rich and cinema-like though the HDMI port. Digital audio and video quality is as good as the TV station can provide. Reception is very good. Channels that have moderate snow and ghosting in analog are flawless in digital. Urban power line noise and overhead airplane ghosting is gone. Analog only wins on the faintest stations.

The remote control is more useful than a stick only because the tuner has no buttons on its front. The remote has to be aimed within 15 degrees and held still while pushing buttons. You can't bounce the IR off a wall, send it through a glass table, or tap the buttons while it sits on a table facing the TV.

The onscreen menus are easy to use but not everything works. The manual implies that the tuner is configured for the aspect ratio of your TV. That's not correct. The aspect ratio has to be manually adjusted each time you change between 16:9 and 4:3 channels. The channel guide is handy but the tuner locks up for several seconds each time it fetches a new TV listing. While watching a station, pushing the "Info" button gives you a transparent display about the current channel and program.

Reliability has been poor. The channel listing frequently becomes corrupted and unusable. Usually this happens while bringing up the program guide or changing channels rapidly. In a few cases, the channel simply vanishes as you're watching it. I keep a channel frequency guide nearby for manually reprogramming lost stations. On average the tuner reboots on every use, looses stations every week, and needs the power cycled about every month.

Did not work for me
The receiver can pickup only one channel and that too without audio! The rest of the channels are reported as weak signal or no signal. I have used other receivers that work fine with my Sylvania ED TV. I bought it because it had component out and was reasonably priced. Too bad, it did not work for me.

It is a must have converter if you don't want to pay a cable bill.
It is a must have converter if you don't want to pay a cable bill. It is a must have if you have no digital tuner in your TV and no cable. It is way better than the goverment coupon eligible converter box because it comes with all different cables like the component cable and others. It also works if you have a cable in two rooms and you don't have it in the third room or another area, you can still use it as the box that you wood rent from the cable company. It scanned about 20 channels but it doesn't show them all, may be it is caused by the antenna. It all varies by the area, but it a great converter box that is the best in the market.

Samsung DTBH260F HDTV Receiver Review
The Samsung HDTV receiver is a great little tuner that helps all of those "HD-Ready" type TV sets recieve a true, over-the-air digital signal. I have a good outdoor, chimney-mounted, combination VHF/UHF Antenna, and I am located within 20 miles of most broadcast stations (suburban setup). You'll need to examine what type of HD cable you'll need, as there is no HDMI or DVI cable included. I hooked up the Samsung DTBH260F tuner (simple) and using it's automatic signal search feature, it automatically searches out all signals it can find. Every station that is currently broadcasting digitally comes in "full-strength" according to the Samsung's viewable signal strength meter (1 to 5 bars). The handy on-screen channel tv guide is a nice feature that is a bit slow to load. Especially when moving between different channels in the guide. One more note, the remote control needs larger buttons for accessing the info guide, still feature, zoom (16:9) feature. All in all the Samsung is a worthy product for folks that need a digital tuner for their HD-Ready set.

Easy to install, sturdy.
All is good except that the receiver seems to be slow responding to remote control.