PrimeDTV PHD-101 / PHD-200 / PHD-205 / PHD-205LE ATSC/QAM Tuner Official Thread - Page 17

Where do you live? My friend gets Fox in HD using this device (SF Bay Area, Comcast Cable)

Unless you near the Canadian border.
It really didn't work with my 19" LCD that I use for my computer monitor. I assume this is what you were talking about. It had a problem locking up and displaying a centered image.
Beside, the video looked terrible, especially analog, as the monitor wasn't designed for SD. I have seen it reported in the past, these straight 'computer' monitors don't do well with analog TV or any 'TV" for that matter. They were made for text. DVDs' don't look good either. I would assume it's the scaling that is the issue.

For those newcomers, here is my review of the 205;
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post11303232


Has anyone had their unit power up by itself??

Yes... along with a slew of other problems including not decoding Dolby Digital properly, and DVI output not handshaking properly with an HDCP compliant 720p native projector.

Ordered one today.

I never tested the digital audio out, nor the DVI except on a computer monitor. Because (mostly) of the monitor, it didn't work.

Ordered a PHD-205 this morning. It still seems to be the tuner with the most features on the market (for the price) and nothing new seems to be on the horizon. I'm sure once I have it hooked up I'll at least post a mini review with my opinions.

All you people posting that you just bought one of these?... I hope you don't have the problems I did. I feel as if I could have just thrown $150 in the trash . Good luck to you all...

I've thrown more that that away in the past.

This is an excellent STB. I've only had it for a month or so, but so far I love it. It has the best atsc reception of any box I've ever used.

Got mine in tonight. It was able to pull in my missing channel. Works great so far!

I hope it doesn't give any problems either since I bought it for friends as a Xmas present and I live out of state! But I did leave them with the receipt (in a sealed envelope!) in case they needed to do a return/repair.

So far it's worked well, using analogue audio, component video and picking up all the FTA channels available on their cable system.

Mine worked well too, till 2 weeks after the warranty ended .

I am sure the vendor would understand that and cut you some slack. Did you try asking?

Here is a little bit of info for everyone.

I own a PHD200, I have been using it for about a year to decode QAM and OTA for my HDTV that is really not a HDTV, but a HD monitor. I pull in all of the QAM signals on my cable, in fact, I see 59 analog and 222 digital channels with 4 QAM and 29 DMX.

I work with a guy that owns a Samsung plasma with a built in QAM tuner. He couldn't get any QAM on his set. I took my PHD200 to his house and scaned his cable and found the same 59/222 channels.

Not bad for a $150 box!

I bit the bullet and bought one of the PHD-205s, intending to hook it to a standard VGA LCD Computer display. Everything works super, except on this 4:3 monitor, there is no way to force letterboxing of 16:9 content, so everything is stretched vertically. Has anyone worked around this problem, or is there a firmware update in the works to address this issue?

Otherwise, I'm a happy customer...

Got my PHD-205 this week. Based on some of the comments I was a little concerned, but so far so good. Most of the rest of the comments I wrote the first night I got it, but not much has changed after 5 days of use. I'm happy with it so far.

Overall, it's a much nicer looking unit in real life than in the pics. The only exception is that the characters on the display are nowhere near as big as they appear in the pics. It's a little goofy that it says "boot" on the display whenever you turn it on. I'm using this on a 42" 1080p monitor over DVI, resolution on the PHD-205 is set to 1080i. The fonts and the alpha channels they use in the interface are very nice. The setup was easy other than on cable you have to choose between STD, IRC, HRC for cable. Hmmm ... I picked STD, it took quite a while to scan but came up with all the analogs (71) and lots of digitals (295). Oh no, I'm thinking it's probably a bunch of unreceivable ones, but actually all the digitals were legit including the NHL game plan preview Comcast is doing this week. There were a bunch of duplicates on the local channels and a lot of music channels (I was surprised that it also picks up the somewhat lame trivia and artist video on the music channels). It auto-sets the time after you give it your time zone info.

So, in real use on cable, it wasn't too bad. A lot of channels to navigate. The program "Guide" doesn't do anything other than show what's playing on the current channel, and what's on next ... for the channels it works for, which on cable was mostly a few of the locals. Also, it tries to auto-detect the call letters/name of the channels, but that only worked for a handful of channels (the HD locals, and a handful of other cable channels, maybe 10-15 total). Not sure yet how motivated I am to go in and enter them manually (especially since I assume if it loses power, my work will be lost). It handles 3 favorite lists with separate buttons on the remote. Programming favorites helps considerably with navigating a bunch of channels. One thing I was looking forward to was the zoom feature, which will let you get letterbox movies on SD channels to fill an HD widescreen. I've tried it some and am happy with the results.

After the time it took to do the cable scan, I was reluctant to try OTA (and then have to do the cable again). Also, some of our locals aren't so local, and usually take a decent antenna to pick up. All I have is a decent set of rabbit ears. I'm glad I took the time to try it. I was only expecting to pick up a couple of the locals, but even with the rabbit ears, I was able to pick up all the digital locals, including the ones they usually recommend somewhat larger antennas for. Nice! And the channel names all came through, plus the program guide for each channel. Nice! It was great knowing I can get CBS in HD, as Comcast won't carry it.

The buttons are a little small on the remote, but it's pretty easy to use. It responds to the remote much more quickly than my Comcast DVR. Since I now realize I could get an extra OTA channel, I can see why some are asking for dual inputs. Seems like if your cable and OTA locals matched up, it wouldn't be such a big deal. I haven't tried the digital audio out yet, hopefully this weekend.

Wishlist-wise, I wish it had a sleep timer. Wish the favorite list navigation would show the channel names, wish it would save tuner settings when you go between OTA and Cable. Wish for some way to save/load channel names you add manually. Wish there was a way to see the nice Channel Scan view with the signal strengths without doing a channel scan. Wish the range/angles the remote works at was a little longer/wider.

System information says Chipset: ATI Technology; Demod: ATI Theater; Remote Code: 254; Version: 32.11.12

No. It's the same for many/most satellite receivers and for probably all new TV's also. Thet just don't say "boot".

Good review, pmjoe!

klier, did you figure out a work-around for widescreen material on your 4:3 monitor?

I was so set to order a 205 this weekend, but then my PC died and I had to buy a new hard drive, vid card and OS (but at least I got away with a new BFG 8800 GTS!). Oh well, the new PHD with cablecard slot should be coming out soon...


J/K, I wouldn't want to start any rumors - that last sentence was just a wish list item!

Nope, not without moving the rear resolution control to 480, which kind of defeats the purpose.

I sent snapshots of what I was seeing to Allen from epBoard. I'm waiting to hear anything back. He was very polite when I was on the phone with him, so hopefully some fix will be made through firmware. One would think the problem could be solved by just adding an additional Aspect option.

This STB is junk. I've emailed him 3 times over the last month and never heard anything back. I don't believe there will ever be any improvements to the 205. Some things could easily be fixed via firmware, but he's too busy counting all his money to bother with us lowly customers.

I'm thinking of buying the PHD-205 to receive QAM HDTV signals from my cable system so I can decode the additional SD (480p) sub-channels that are now being broadcast in addition to the main HDTV (ATSC) signal, and then use the composite or S-video output to connect to an analog TV. The intention is to decode the digital main channel or the sub-channels and watch them on an analog TV.

Can I use this device be used for this purpose? This will be used with an older analog TV that I intend on keeping in use after D-Day (2/17/09). It has only composite and S-video inputs (in addition to the regular F connector)

Thanks!

It should work for that. The stb does have s-vid output, although I have never hooked it up through that connection though.

He doesn't or can't respond to e-mails, possibly because he doesn't get them (?).

Pick up the phone and call him.

So after using this a few weeks, my only significant complaints are:

• turns mute off (if you had it on) when you change the channel
• loses favorites and channel name programming if you re-scan channels
• remote is picky at more than a few degrees off-angle

In my earlier post, I said it was reporting ~300 digital channels on the auto-scan. I've come to the conclusion that it's counting encrypted channels, but then it doesn't list them in the available channels. The actual number available with all the (mostly) music channels is ~70.

Minor annoyance.
EVERY tuner (AFAIK) out there does the same thing.
The remote and the buttons are way too small. Do what just about everyone does and use a universal remote.

The outstanding issue is this analog video/sync AGC issue and the lack of two RF inputs (as with 99% of the tuners & TVs' out there).

I've had mine for maybe 5-6 months, and it often would just get stuck on certain channels (namely any channel in the 5's). Today, it was working, and then I noticed that it wouldn't turn on anymore. I opened it up to see what was going on, and the power circuit was making a buzzing sound. I checked for shorts and didn't see any, so I pressed the power button again, and the opamp on the power circuit literally blew up. It shot sparks everywhere. Lucky for me, I'll get to find out how their warranty system works.

Wow, that's weird. I've made complaints here about mine. Among other things, i could not get it to pass the surround sound codecs to my receiver. Everything was always in PCM stereo, no matter what I did or what settings I used. About two manths ago I turned it on and tuned to a HD tv channel. All of the sudden, I heard a click and presto... I was now getting the surround sound that I should have been getting all the time. I know for a fact that it was never my receiver or cable problem, it was definately the tuner. It has been working fine now for about 2 months. There are other quirks, but that one was the biggest. Weird stuff...

BTW kong132, I may be wrong, but you'd better check that warranty... I think it's only 90 days

I have had a PHD-205 for a number of months. It has problems with the audio on both the main HDTV channel and weather subchannel my local NBC station. The audio repeatedly mutes for an instant and then comes back on both channels. I have other DTV receivers that receive these channels with no problem. It also has the problem others have noted with bright pictures when looking at NTSC channels. Last week it died entirely. I found that the problem was a bad 33uF 400 volt capacitor on the power supply board. The bad part was replaced and it is again functioning such as it is.

I got the digital audio hooked up a few weeks ago and it worked fine. The only quirky thing is that over the digital audio out the volume control adjusts the volume for the analog channels but not the digital ones. I'd prefer that it didn't adjust either (since a digital out is likely to be hooked up to a receiver/amp with a volume control), but in any case it ought to be consistent.

kong132; Ask to see if they would send you a replacement PS. Long shot I know.