Samsung DTB-H260F ATSC tuner - Page 11

Gee, you'd think they might advertise that.

No accounting for the inexplicable HDTV industry weirdness.

Ugly thought for the day:
Oh, now tell me that costco sharp 32" LCD with all the unadvertised advanced features also had a 5th gen tuner chip inside

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post8388026

When I first set mine up I had the same problem. The only thing I did was to turn the volume up on my TV to somewhere in the middle of the volume range. Now I use the volume control on the STB and I am in the 5-10 range in a large room. If you want to use the TV volume then increase the STB volume to a higher level.

Hope that works for you.

Later,
Anthony

I agree it's all in the chips.

I recently read a review of tuner tests that found absolutely no correlation between the price of integrated TVs and performance. In fact, on average, the tuners in lower priced TVs outperformed higher priced sets.

Here's a somewhat off the wall question regarding the DTB-H260F--can it be hooked up to a home theater pc to record programs? I'm not satisfied with the tuners I already have in the box. Would like to feed what the H260f picks up and send the digital sigal to the pc to record, maybe even using the installed Beyond TV software to sked the recordings. The playback would be through the PC's graghics card via a div to hdmi cable. The PC does not have a firewire port, but that can easily be installed. Any thoughts or suggestions truly welcome.

rrroae,

I wonder if you are experiencing the range vs multipath issue of the 5th gen chips at least as found in the Samsung.

Maybe the Samsung Handles multpath better than it handles picking up extended range stations.

BTW- can you receive Sat at your location?

-DonB2

Ok I will admit it, I am an idiot .

Last night I was trying to get the TV guide to work on my new Samsung and was not seeing anything. Than my brother pointed out I was pressing the colored button and not the Guide button directly below it.

When I finally pressed the correct button I was impressed to see how quickly the tv guide info was filled in and how the downsized version of the channel selected is on the screen in the beginning and not displayed after the tv guide is built.

The tv guide on this Samsung is blazingly fast compared to the one built into my Pioneer 43 inch Plasma.

I also think the Samsung remote has better range than the one that was shipped with the SIR T 451's.

-DonB2

Just purchased the DBT-H260F yesterday, hooked it up using a rabbit ear antenna. This is my first HD STB, but I'm really not too impressed with the picture quality. I currently have digital cable. When I hooked it up last night, I was watching CSI broadcast in 1080i. It didn't look any better than what the digital cable does. Is there a setting either on the box or on my TV to change. I have the switch on the back of the receiver on 1080i and also using a HDMI to DVI cable to my TV. My TV is a Toshiba CRT RPTV model number 42HDX82

When watching a channel being broadcasted in 480, its really blocky and unbearable to watch.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

If I can't get a better picture, the unit is going back and I'll have to stick with digital cable. I was hoping to cancel cable if I can get the STB to look good.

Thanks again for any help.
D

what tv do you have?

My TV is a Toshiba Rear Projection CRT
Model # 42HDX82

Rick0725, I think I'll go ahead and get the 91xg, . I'm about 88 miles from my towers so I'll definately need something more directional. I also have a total of 20 ft of new cable(rg-6)
and no splits since even a small loss of signal makes a difference to me. Thanks for the advice.

DonB2, I can get SAT but we live off-grid and would forgo TV if we had to pay for service.

Your TV is 720p, at least that's what I saw from a quick google search. You should have the STB set to 720p.

If the channels you want are all over-the-air, there is no reason to pay for cable. You'll get just as good a picture with this tuner. What connections did you use to plug into your TV?

Can't do it, at least not currently. You can't take the output from the H260f (or any other STB tuner for that matter) and capture it with a PC tuner. I've got BeyondTV with the ATI HDTV Wonder in my PC and that works great.

Thanks for the quick reply jimp...I have the Divico Fusion 5 and the performance is pretty good considering I'm about 35 miles from the towers with some multipath issues. The Samsung STB looks interesting in terms of hardware and a possible solution to multipath and the price seems reasonable for what you get versus the cost of PC tuner cards. My thought was that I could run the digital signal from the Sammy through either the hdmi output (via a hmdi to dvi cable) or from the component output into the HTPC, either bypassing or just uninstalling the Divico card. I wasn't sure if there was a PCI/usb interface gizmo that would accept that signal and from there use either BTV or some other software to do the HD recording. I use BTV now and really like it. I've Googled the stuffing out of this and haven't come up with anything so far.

I wouldn't waste your money IMO. At that distance you will get breakups. They are very annoying. I lived in two locations and was able to get stations at 50 miles. With the change in seasons and weather the signal is not all that reliable. I think you would be better served in trying something else. Have cable? Maybe go after qam.

I have to agree !!
At that Distance from the Towers your not going to Enjoy much! You'll be so frustrated with the Breakups!!

But it's your $$$ !

I was picking up an Elmira NY digital station from West Windsor which is East of Binghamton, NY and about 60 miles distance from Elmira as the crow flys.

The antenna is on rotor and a little over 1700ft altitude on roof as the house is at 1700ft.

The signal was viewable but it was touchy adjusting the rotor. But keep in mind the antenna is over 30 years old.

Of course maybe I was just having a lucky day and 60 miles is still long short of 88 miles.

A rule of thumb I have found is that if you don't get at least a viewable signal with analog NTSC than you will struggle with a consistant ATSC signal.

-DonB2

Try using the component output.

I live in the Natick, Mass area and have comcast cable.

I received the Samsung DTB-H260F unit today but could not get the DTB to pick up any stations off the Comcast cable. I tried the cable/std, cable/irc and cable/hrc modes. The DTB is supposed to be able to get QAM in the clear channels.

I was able to get the digital stations off Comcast using a PrimeDTV unit and an LG LST-4200 earlier this year. I no longer have these units so I can't try them again.

The Samsung unit works fine for OTA channels.

Some questions.

- Has anyone successfully been able to get this box with work with comcast? How about in Mass?

- Is the QAM feature of the Samsung not compatible with Comcast in Mass?

- Any thoughts on why this is not working and what I might try?

Hi All -

I have the DTB-H260F. Picked it up at a Circuit City in Glen Burnie, MD. Boy, I had to chase this unit down. The inventory said only 1 left in the store and I had to convince the guy who worked there to keep looking in the stock room until it finally turned up.

Backstory - I bought this unit for QAM reception on Comcast Cable. I have an Sony GWIII so it does not have a built in ATSC tuner. I do have HDTV via Comcast but I have problems getting the set top box work with closed captioning for HDTV programming (EIA708). Anyway when I got my Panasonic plasma TV for my downstairs room, it has built in ATSC tuner for QAM programming. I was surprised to see the captions work for all the stations that my Comcast set top box did not display. Rather than fighting with Comcast to convince them that their STB was flawed, I decided that maybe a STB for clear-QAM would give me access to closed captioning. With this Samsung unit, I was right! It picked up all my QAM channels (clear) and was able to display the closed captions.

However, a major caveat: this unit has picture breakups! I can't explain it, the picture sometimes breaks up as if the signal is poor. How can it be poor - the Comcast STB was perfectly happy with it, in fact, I have it on a splitter between the STB and the Samsung. I even tried removing the splitter, no improvement. Strange that a much older box is better at QAM decoding than the newer Samsung (I've had the Comcast STB for a while now, maybe 3 - 4 years now. It's a Motorola DCT6100).

Anyway, when I did a channel scan with the Samsung, I was able to pick up almost 320 QAM channels! Obviiously, a good chunk of those are scrambled so I won't see those. What is odd is my Panny picks up different channels that the Samsung does not see, and the Samsung picks up channels that the Panasonic missed. Go figure!!! I figure that the Panasonic ATSC tuner has a wider range than the Samsung, but that doesn't explain why the Panasonic missed some channels that the Samsung STB caught.

Bottom line, I bought this unit to get access to more closed captioning performance and it delivers. However I am disappointed that it has issues with ipicture breakups with what appears to be signal quality issues. I might have a defective unit but I can't just take it back and ask for another one - I had a hard time getting this one as is!! Why are they so hard to get?!?!

I am wondering if there is a firmware update for this Samsung STB to maybe improve my signal quality - I can't imagine I have a weak signal, I have a video amplifier in the coax distribution network.

Finally, is there a service menu for this Samsung STB so I can see the error counts and the automatic gain control setting so I can get an idea if the signal is being boosted and if the error counts are increasing? I can see this information on my Motorola STB.

Thanks.

I've also seen intermittant small picture breakups with Comcast unencrypted QAM on a few specific channels (e.g. ch 2-1). Some days it's fine, then others the breakups return again. Other than those occasional glitches, it's working great.

I just checked the Samsung website - no firmware updates listed yet.

It's quite possible that you have too much signal. A variable attenuator from Radio Shack would be a good test. You can always return it if it doesn't help.

I have heard that antenna performance deteriorates over time due to exposure to elements (of course, I mean antennas mounted outside...).

I wonder what the optimal replacement schedule is, for example, 5 years at the most to keep peak performance?

Deterioration may vary widely, depending on the type of equipment you have and how well it was weatherproofed during install. Weatherproofing the coax connectors and baluns helps a lot.

As for a schedule, if it ain't broke.....

I hooked up my DTB-H60F to my cable provider, Mediacom, scanned the channels and it found a boatload of encrypted channels and about 50-60 unencrypted channels. Quite a few were music channels. I get a few PPV or VOD channels in the clear. I think most of the HD channels, except for locals, are encrypted. I haven't had a chance to go through all the channels to make sure.

The guide doesn't show any information on the channels. Do I have to have the STB on for awhile before they show up or will I never get them?

The box seems nice so far. I haven't tried OTA yet.

--AirData

I'm in the same situation up in Andover, MA. Since I only get "lifeline" cable (ch2-22 only, I use D* for cable ch's) I figured they were just filtering out the QAM frequencies. But at least one other poster earlier in this thread also claimed it failed to pick up QAM channels that he could receive using a PC-based tuner card.

Its not a huge issue for me right now, the OTA reception capability has been so rock-solid, its looks as if I might not even need QAM as a backup unless a category 2 hurricane ever makes it way up here!!

I just picked up this unit today. After scanning for QAM It displayed 191 channels but none showed a picture. I subscribe to cable 2-27. Shouldn't this tuner at least show those channels?? Is the reason why because this stb only displays hd stuff???

It only receives digital channels. If your "cable 2 thru 27" is only analog, you won't see those chs on this box. You need to use your TV's analog tuner or a VCR for analog.

Well, after removing the cable splitter I now get my hd locals over QAM. This is what I wanted so everything worked out for me. For those of you having QAM issues mine wouldn't work with the cable going through a splitter. One thing that I'm confused on is this units inability to accept ota and cable at the same time. Is there a way around this?
Thanks

Scan, Auto Program, Air and Cable? No cable here, so can't try.

Yes, but the Samsung only has one input for either cable or ota??? I don't see a second input.