OTA ATSC tuners that work well? (HVR-1600 and 850 get horrible reception!)

[sgilani]

Hey,

Does anyone know of an ATSC tuner for OTA in the U.S. that is good at picking up signal? My LG TV, and even my puny $50 battery-powered TV picks up about 20 channels from my roof antenna with high signal strength, but both my HVR-1600 and HVR-850 pick up just 4! Quite frustrating and makes me wonder if Hauppauge is cutting corners on it's components, which would be sad.

Has anyone had luck with any others?

[pcostanza]

About a year ago I tried my 1600 with some rabbit ears that were old and got 8 channels out of 14 but I went back to QAM. I'm pretty sure if you used a better antennae, you'd get more channel.
Check out AntennaWeb.

[sgilani]

Yeah, I used AntennaWeb to pick out which one to buy, and I'm pretty sure the antenna is okay, as I get plenty of channels with high signal strength on my TVs (and those digital converter boxes as well). It's just the Hauppauge devices that only pickup a handful (and even from those, one is often breaking up).

Do the Aver ones work any better for ATSC?

[pcostanza]

I've not tried the Aver Media tuners but before you give up, make sure you have the latest drivers.
ftp://hauppauge.com/support/
They're old but it won't hurt to make sure you're as up to date as possible. And, using AntennaWeb, see where most of the towers are in your area and face the antennae in that direction.

[sgilani]

Thanks for the link.. Looks like I've got the latest drivers already. I had the antenna installed years ago, and it has always worked like a champ on my TVs, but lousy on the Hauppauge cards.

[johnsonx42]

I've always been really happy with my HVR-1250 for ATSC. It's always picked up all the channels, even when other tuners (including the HVR-850) didn't. My current antenna setup seems 'just right' so that all channels come in on both tuners, but in the past I had some that only the HVR-1250 could receive reliably. Even in the early days before the digital switch-over, when the stations were broadcasting digital on alternate frequencies with reduced power, the HVR-1250 always brought in the channels while the other tuner (a KWorld back then) struggled.

[sgilani]

Sweet.. then the 1250 might be worth a test. I guess it would be a gamble in case it doesn't work, but I'll bite and see how it goes and report back. Thanks for the tip!

[sgilani]

johnson, i got the 1250 and it works like a champ! Everything scanned in and the signals monitor app shows a high SNR. Thanks for the tip! :-)

[johnnysocko]

My 1600 gets great reception. And it gets all the same channels as the 3 other tuners in the house.

I'm not too pleased with the viewing once received however - a lot of jerky viewing