I’m looking for a small 23-26” LCD HDTV TV for my computer/media room that has a good tuner and scanning menu system.

I tried a Samsung 2353H. It had a great tuner but the menu / channel scan system was not good for DX-ing. The main problem was a new scan deleted any stored channels that weren’t received during a new scan. It did not have the option to do an add-to type scan.

I went to the local Sears where the sales folks left me alone to experiment. They have in-store analog and digital demo RF channels.

I experimented by disconnecting the RF cable and doing a scan, then checked to see if existing channels got deleted and found the Toshiba was the only one I tried that did not. Another good feature I discovered is all of the analog channels can be added/deleted by clicking menu boxes for each channel from a list that is already there; no scanning required.

I guess my question is if you have a current or recent Toshiba LCD how well does the tuner work as far as sensitivity & overload etc?

Are there other make/models you know of that are good for DX and have good menu systems for storing many DTV channels?

There are several cases in this area where there are multiple RF/display channel exact matches. One example is RF ch28 displayed as ch3, some tuners will have problems storing both simultaneously.

You'd be better off searching in the LCD Flat Panel section.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=166

As a member of this DXing group http://www.wtfda.info/index.php , the general opinion is that most of the current HDTVs with built-in tuners are not very user-friendly for DXing DTV. A couple members in Canada recently purchased the RCA L19WD20 and, according to their reviews, found the built-in tuner to be quite good for DXing purposes.

As for STBs, the Samsung DTB-H260F (a current model) has received a number of good reviews for DXing. I personally have not used this particular model, but several of us in the group prefer the older, out of production, RCA ATSC11 (STB) which is occasionally available via Ebay. This is the unit I've found to be very good for DXing DTV. Some of my screen shots can be seen via the link below.

Steve

Thanks for the reply guys.

mjones,
I looked over there but their priorities are different, figured this "reception" section was more applicable.

goldrich,
I’ll look into the RCA Set(s) I haven’t tried their channel menu yet.

I used to be a member of WTFDA back in the 70’s and 80’s. Went to a few national meetings; OKC, New Orleans, and one somewhere on a mountain in north GA (was a beautiful spot). One of the guys had an FM antenna he could roof mount on his car for mountaintop DX-ing. I still have several photos of the gatherings.

A year or so ago I dug out my Channel Master 7’ Parabolic UHF antenna and the rest of the tower sections I have and extended it up to just over a 100’. No pre-amp, just good RG-11 cable. Best DTV catches so-far are Nashville, Tallahassee, & Austin.

I have a PRO HD3150 DTV Tuner that’s ok, but need a new TV and wanted to have an all-in-one box, plus, having the analog easily available would be a good thing. I do transmitter site work for our state PubTV network so it comes in handy for monitoring as I can often get 3 of our sites from here, and over time have received them all.

I lost interest in FM DXing because of clutter on the band with all the low power (mostly religious) “roaches and mosquitoes” as I call them. And, the programming on FM in this area leaves a lot to be desired, but XM fills that void.

Also like DVB Sat and waiting for the HD versions to shake out the bugs better. Have an older RX but it is only SD and doesn't do or spit out Dolby Audio so can't hear the PBS Sat audio :-(