Samsung DTBH260F HDTV Terrestrial Receiver

I being using this product for a while now and I just love it. Has all the features you could want. Picture looks great channel info., clock etc. I only have two complaints that really are not that bad. It takes a while to power up, but if you leave on I guess no problem there and second if your favorite channel on intial scan was missed even if you enter manually it still doesnt recognized it. Love the organized and edit, I still dont regret buying it.

EXPECTATION: A full featured TV tuner to be used with a HD monitor.

REALITY: A glorified DTV tuner, much like the $50 units offered with the exception of an HDMI, Toslink & RGB output.

PROS: It provides a quality video output.

CONS: Weak line level audio output performance, WIll not receive SD cable broadcast, Very slow startup, Only controlled from the remote, Weak menus for channel setup & very slow channel learning.

This product did not do what I expected nor does it preform well. In particular, the line level audio output is not very good at all. Compared to my Samsung LCD, the line level audio output to a known good audio system seems flat sounding.

The bigger disappointment is it does not include a SD receiver. I'd planned to use this tuner to connect my 42" monitor to my local cable service for the basic cable services I receive. I was disappointed to find It will only receive the clear QAM channels Comcast offers (not very many here) and non of the standard broadcast provided by Comcast. The results is I really don't receive much more than I would over the air locally and what I get through the cable does not include any programing info (thanks Comcast).

I also don't like the idea of only being able to control it from the remote. with out the remote it becomes a paper weight and is rendered useless. The menus and channel setup is also very annoying. you can not add channels without first going through the very low learning of all the channels within range. (not a very good design that seems to run throughout the Samsung product line)

Lastly, it takes a while to boot up every time I turn it on. it's a little anoying because it's in a location that I can't see the power light. Often times I end up hitting the power button on the remote several times not knowing if it's booting up or not. Seems a little odd it takes up to 5 seconds before any audio or video output comes from it.

I plan to eventually use the Toslink output with the hopes of better audio performance. It's an ok performer but not at all what I expected.

Although the selection of digital tuners are very small, If I knew what I know now, I don't think I would have purchased this unit.

I need to supplement the analog tuners in my DVRs. This unit is useless for anything that does not have a RGB or HDMI input. The sound quality using analog connections is awful, too. The unit produces a loud buzz on the audio channels that makes hearing any sounds practically impossible.

You cannot use this unit on an analog-only TV or a VCR or DVR with analog-only inputs. I tried every connection on the back of the box & could not get a picture through my recorder. The RGB component connection worked only on my TV, but I don't need it there.

It also nearly fried my DVRs tuner using the antenna output. After I tried connecting it, the DVR would only receive channel 4 & I could not change the channel through either the remote or the unit's control panel. I had to completely reset the unit & run factory setup again to get it working.

This turned out to be a very expensive fiasco for me.

The manual leaves out a lot of instructions on how to set the unit up and does not make a point of telling the consumer that it only works on the digital outputs even though the analog connections are available on the back of the set.

Anyone who needs a tuner for an older TV with analog inputs or who wants to use it for a VCR/DVR, don't buy this.

A simple $40 to $80 converter box is more useful at 1/2 to 1/4 the price.

Not wanting to pay for poor local cable service, I put up a rooftop antenna and used this tuner with an older 720p LCD TV. Set-up was a brick wall at first because the manual isn't very useful. Finding auto-scan got things going. An online web site translating DTV to channel frequencies helped in manually adding channels that needed antenna rotation.

HDTV colors are rich and cinema-like though the HDMI port. Digital audio and video quality is as good as the TV station can provide. Reception is very good. Channels that have moderate snow and ghosting in analog are flawless in digital. Urban power line noise and overhead airplane ghosting is gone. Analog only wins on the faintest stations.

The remote control is more useful than a stick only because the tuner has no buttons on its front. The remote has to be aimed within 15 degrees and held still while pushing buttons. You can't bounce the IR off a wall, send it through a glass table, or tap the buttons while it sits on a table facing the TV.

The onscreen menus are easy to use but not everything works. The manual implies that the tuner is configured for the aspect ratio of your TV. That's not correct. The aspect ratio has to be manually adjusted each time you change between 16:9 and 4:3 channels. The channel guide is handy but the tuner locks up for several seconds each time it fetches a new TV listing. While watching a station, pushing the "Info" button gives you a transparent display about the current channel and program.

Reliability has been poor. The channel listing frequently becomes corrupted and unusable. Usually this happens while bringing up the program guide or changing channels rapidly. In a few cases, the channel simply vanishes as you're watching it. I keep a channel frequency guide nearby for manually reprogramming lost stations. On average the tuner reboots on every use, looses stations every week, and needs the power cycled about every month.

The receiver can pickup only one channel and that too without audio! The rest of the channels are reported as weak signal or no signal. I have used other receivers that work fine with my Sylvania ED TV. I bought it because it had component out and was reasonably priced. Too bad, it did not work for me.