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Re: Recomendation for HDTV recievers ??

63.170.214.93

Posted by CraigVC on October 26, 2003 at 14:51:03

In Reply to: Re: Recomendation for HDTV recievers ?? posted by AbeCollins on October 19, 2003 at 11:59:06:

I would be very cautious about the Samsung HDTV units. At the very least, make sure the place you buy it from has a 30-day (or better) return policy with $0 restocking fees or other penalties.

Here's my Samsung HDTV experience (so far), plugging it into a Samsung SDTV (480p) 27" television with Monster component cables, and using a Denon 3801 AV receiver for Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with Monster optical cable:

- Six weeks ago I bought the Samsung SIR-T151. I had to buy a couple of different indoor antennas to find one that worked best in my ground-floor apartment (tough situation for reception, I know). Found the Zenith Silver Sensor ZHDTV1 to work best, by the way, though it's highly directional and I have to move it manually to receive different channels.

- The Samsung SIR-T151 worked pretty good with one exception: on any Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (but not 2-channel digital audio), the unit would stop decoding the sound about every thirty minutes or so, leaving nothing but silence. After a lot of troubleshooting and experimenting, I found that the only way I could restore the sound was to switch to a different (non DD 5.1) HDTV channel, then switch back to the original channel. That would force the unit to "find" the DD 5.1 audio again and it would start outputting sound again. Of course, every 20-30 minutes I would have to repeat the process when the sound stopped. This was most annoying when watching Monday Night Football.

- Realizing the store I bought this unit from (Good Guys in Portland) has a 30-day return policy, I took the unit back toward the end of the 30-days and got a refund. Then I drove literally across the street to Circuit City and bought the newer Samsung SIR-T351, thinking that surely Samsung has corrected the Dolby Digital output errors of the earlier SIR-T151 unit. . . .

- Well, not only are the Dolby Digital output errors WORSE on this Samsung SIR-T351 unit (now the errors are more sporadic and they happen on every program, not just ones with Dolby Digital 5.1), but I also have a new problem: this SIR-T351 won't decode the Portland CBS affiliate's HDTV broadcast signal! This to me is bizarre. I can tune the channel (40), and I can go into the settings menu and verify that I'm receiving a strong signal, but there is absolutely no sound or picture. I'm only guessing, but it's possible that Portland's CBS affiliate uses a different ATSC signal standard (aren't there 18 different standards?) than the other local HDTV stations, and this particular unit that I bought has a defect in its circuitry that keeps it from properly decoding the CBS signal, even though it obviously is receiving it. (I received the local CBS affiliate just fine on the SIR-T151 unit, by the way.)

- Whew! So now I'm about 1 week into my ownership of the Samsung SIR-T351, and I guarantee you that it's going back to Circuit City in 3 weeks when the 30-day return policy is almost over. Because I couldn't pick up the CBS HDTV affiliate yesterday, I had to watch that thrilling multi-overtime Tennessee/Alabama college football game in crummy worse-than-NTSC-quality standard DISHNetwork format.

- When I return that faulty Samsung SIR-T351 unit, hopefully the new DISHNetwork OTA+satellite HDTV receivers (model #811 or something like that?) will be available for purchase and I'll give that one a try.

I suppose I'll just keep buying different OTA HDTV receivers (there aren't many though; most are DirecTV) until I find one that works right. I guess that's the curse of being an "early adopter" of new technology?

Craig.

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