Samsung DTBH260F HDTV Terrestrial Receiver

Samsung DTBH260F receiver fills the bill for those who purchased early versions of "HD Compatible" TVs that did not actually have the HD receiver built in. Picks up HD transmissions well using on-air antenna, displays a clean HD signal on TV. Only negative is that you have to purchase a HDMI to DVI-D cable separately. (available off internet for about $10.00.) I'm ready for February 17th!

I bought smaller inexpensive converters to use with my two smaller TVs but for my large Sony HD-ready TV, I bought this unit and find that it is well worth the money; I am quite pleased.

A caveat, though. Contrary to the common talk that plain old rabbit ears will work for all channels, I did have problems with a number of stations not having adequate signals. I resolved that issue by replacing my old (really old!) rabbit ears with a Winegard SS-3000 Amplified Indoor UHF/VHF Antenna (also from Amazon).

The only downside to the Samsung unit that I found is that the remote will not control the on/off for the TV, a minor inconvenience. I'm looking into a universal remote that will handle both.

If you are in the market for a higher-end unit, I highly recommend this unit.

I am going to caveat my review by saying that if you are looking at this product to get free HDTV premium channels through your cable, it's not for that. It can grab the HD channels that are NOT ENCRYPTED and that's it, which are the exact same channels you can get Over The Air (OTA) for free. By law the cable company can't encrypt the OTA channels. If you want ESPN/TLC/TNT in HD you must get your cable company's HD box. They encrypt these to get more money from you, bottom line. Conversely, if you simply want to recieve OTA digital TV to an analog set or NON HDTV set, get a cheaper box. I think a lot of people who give this a negative review buy this box for the wrong purpose.

If you want High Definition TV done right, this is the ticket!!

Now with that said. Your cable company will never be able to match the picture quality of this box hooked to an antenna due to the fact that the OTA signal is NOT COMPRESSED and a cable/satellite signal is via MP2 or MP4. Also, you must use an HDMI cable to fully take advantage of this. It's worth it and it's only a one time cost. I'm connected via HDMI to an LCD projector on a 100" screen. You can see the footprints in the grass, sweat on the players faces and the seams on the ball when watching an NFL game!! HD through the cable box or this box connected to cable and the TV via HDMI was darn good, but with a quality OTA antenna connected via HDMI in 1080i, this is amazing. That's what I bought this box for and it rightfully deserves 5 stars as it does exactly that better than any other product out there.

I use a roof mounted medium range antenna with a pre-amp (the blue one)and am about 30-35 miles from most antennae in the DFW area with a fairly clear shot and get about 30 channels. If it weren't for ESPN and Cartoon Network for the kids we would ditch the cable altogether and put one of these in every room and will have saved enough cable costs in a year to pay for four of these.

Right now I use component left/right stereo sound and it works fine. My next purchase in a few months will be a true 5.1 reciever connected via the fiber optic port so I'll get to see how the Dolby Digital Surround works. For now, no complaints.

Slight delays changing channels are to be expected when processing signals with this amount of complexity and information. Regular TV just doesn't look right any longer.

Just for a goof we hooked it to our new LCD HDTV we have in the bedroom that has a built in ATSC tuner. It was connected to cable via HDMI for a comparison. It does change channels slower than the TV's built in tuner but this had slightly better picture definition. I guess it depends on what exactly you prefer. The bedroom TV it still on the cable. I want to see the Cowboys on the big TV in pristine high definition and this is the thing that does it better than anything else without a monthly fee.

If you know for certain what purpose you are buying this product, that being Over The Air High Definition Television, it will not let you down. This isn't 70's TV any longer!! Shoot, if people start switching to this, we may see networks like ESPN and Cartoon Network go OTA in metropolitan areas when the cable and satellite companies start losing customers in large numbers.

Works as intended when connected to my HDTV monitors using the RGB connection. The supplied HDMI-DVI cable works with one of my monitors but not the second; The second has only computer and HDMI terminals. Use of the HDMI terminal requires a HDMI-HDMI cable (local price $65 to $100).
One nice feature is the on-line/broadcast program schedule. The remote needs to pointed rather directly in order to work well - The remote's button sensitivity matches. The Tuners price seems high compared with the current price of a HDTV with built-in tuner.

The product is great. The user menus/remote etc. are very nice. The ability to create favorite channels and just scroll through them is a nice feature. My only complaint is that with the use of an indoor antenna, the box just gets weak signals and doesn't display or blanks out shows whenever there is a weak signal. It happens much more than my non-HD DTV box or my PC based ATSC receiver. This is very annoying and as such I have still retained cable access for this reason paying additional charges. May be I need to have a roof top antenna for this problem to disappear. Overall this box is very small so it fits in tight spaces, consumes very little power and I am retaining it because I get a few channels over the air that I do not get even with cable.