Samsung DTBH260F HDTV Terrestrial Receiver

It is a must have converter if you don't want to pay a cable bill. It is a must have if you have no digital tuner in your TV and no cable. It is way better than the goverment coupon eligible converter box because it comes with all different cables like the component cable and others. It also works if you have a cable in two rooms and you don't have it in the third room or another area, you can still use it as the box that you wood rent from the cable company. It scanned about 20 channels but it doesn't show them all, may be it is caused by the antenna. It all varies by the area, but it a great converter box that is the best in the market.

The Samsung HDTV receiver is a great little tuner that helps all of those "HD-Ready" type TV sets recieve a true, over-the-air digital signal. I have a good outdoor, chimney-mounted, combination VHF/UHF Antenna, and I am located within 20 miles of most broadcast stations (suburban setup). You'll need to examine what type of HD cable you'll need, as there is no HDMI or DVI cable included. I hooked up the Samsung DTBH260F tuner (simple) and using it's automatic signal search feature, it automatically searches out all signals it can find. Every station that is currently broadcasting digitally comes in "full-strength" according to the Samsung's viewable signal strength meter (1 to 5 bars). The handy on-screen channel tv guide is a nice feature that is a bit slow to load. Especially when moving between different channels in the guide. One more note, the remote control needs larger buttons for accessing the info guide, still feature, zoom (16:9) feature. All in all the Samsung is a worthy product for folks that need a digital tuner for their HD-Ready set.

All is good except that the receiver seems to be slow responding to remote control.

Unit is very easy to setup, they give you all the cables you need for component audio and video. Its an expensive unit but the inclusion of cables reduces total cost of ownership. If you have a good TV or Home Theater receiver the dolby sound is very clear and works well with 5.1 and 7.1 systems. If you want to use the HDMI interface you will need to supply that cable yourself, but the component video has all the same features and benefits of HDMI on this unit.

Other than a quick reference to figure out the correct switch settings, I didn't have to refer to the manual to set up the unit, only to understand the features available once it was operational.

The initial station auto-scan found all the local stations easily. For some reason it defaults to cable (QAM), easy enough to switch on the remote or OSD but I am left wondering why it doesn't default to Air.

Nearly all the channels came in at full signal strength. I cannot achieve this feat with digital converter boxes on my older TV's even though they have a more powerful antenna system. The tuner is in my opinion very sensitive pulling in channels other TV's tuners can't. I'm impressed. Oh and 1080i looks great, no cable company compression and co$t. This is as good as it gets!! The combination of this tuner and a quality HDTV is stunning. If you need an HD tuner for your older HDTV look no further!

The on screen program guide is very complete with a neat picture-in-picture of the current channel while you browse the available channels. Note that once you do digital over the air, you will get a lot more channel choices. I wish our local stations could keep the program information up to date better.

You do have to be pretty accurate when operating the remote, no bouncing off walls or the ceiling!! You do therefore have to position the unit with this in mind.

The sound can be adjusted on a 0-100 scale, much better than a 0-20 scale other receivers have. You can therefore set the sound level precisely and avoid overshooting the level you desire.

There is a program rating control feature for those that need it.

As with most set top boxes, be sure to take good care of the remote, it has a lot of unique controls a universal remote would not be able to emulate. The Samsung remote cannot be programed to control your TV, so you will have a little remote control clutter.

it worked out of the box. tv guide is slow to download
and to go up or down channel it will stop and wait
(pausing picture in frame to freeze) for the next
channel to download...sometimes slow at it.
the OTA reception was far better than the dishnetwork
hd receiver I had. dish saw 43 channels the samsung unit
picked up 49........same antenna and connector.
changes channels fast enough for me.
only real draw back I have seen is from the tv guide on
channel 54-1 shows 64-1 at bottom of guide. it is when
I exit guide and hit recall it will not go to what
channel I had prior to 54-1, it goes to 64-1. that only
happens when using guide.
recall works fine otherwise.
I'm using it on a old rca type monitor with dvi.
this has hdmi output, hdmi and dvi are not compatible but
they do make a connector to fit and does show picture dimly
so I use component cables. do note incompatibility makes
picture not to fit the screen properly.....it is a tv
problem. the dish replacement box that I sent back was far
worse as I lost over 40% of the picture with it.
never tested adult gard......caption and freeze fine.
size is small. I will keep this one.
note: uses very low power!
15 watts on 1 watt standby
I do not know if it would work as a second tuner for P-I-P.