dish network dtv-pal - Digital Converter Box Review

dish network dtv-pal - Digital Converter Box — 

I knew I had to do something before Feb 2009 when the over-the-air NTSC TV broadcasts are scheduled to go off the air, so I went to the FCC site and applied for coupons for digital converter boxes.  I have a fairly old (actually now that I think of it it is 23 year old) 19 inch TV set, but I'm rather fond of it, it fits well into my living room and in particular a bookcase I have, and I don't yet want to go out and buy a new TV (due to expense primarily).  My parents did buy a 42" DTV which they love, but they also have satellite tv, and I even helped them set up a computer in place of their old DVR recorder...but for myself, I guess I'm a bit of a late adopter or a luddite (just this year I got my first cell phone, and it is a bare-bones model at that).

 Anyhow, since the coupons were set to expire by mid-July 2008, I had to buy a converter before this date to make sure they would accept them (It took about 2 months for me to receive them).  I did some research and was very interested in the DTV-PAL (I think it was originally supposed to cost only $40 and had that as part of its name), but it wasn't yet available.  I even tried to go to Walmart and some other big-box stores to look at converters but found none in stock even upon revisiting them (which had me puzzled, since I don't think I'm alone in using over the air TV reception on old NTSC TV, and the deadline is only about 6 months away, after which you won't be able to view any new (non-self-recorded) TV programs after this date without a converter.  By this time the DTV-PAL was now available, so I went ahead and bought it.

 It was easy to set up, comes with short length of coaxial cabling, and I attached it to my existing UHF antenna, and it seemed to receive all the local stations plus a couple of new ones (weather channel and oldies TV shows).  When you turn it on, there is a brief delay while the converter downloads the program guide (even over the air now resembles cable or satelite TV in that you have online program guides).  You may want to have a second DTV-PAL for your video recorder (if you're like me, you still have old VHS recorder ) since that tuner will also no longer pick up over the air broadcasts after February 19 2008.

I'm pleased with the dtv-pal, my only reservations are that all controls are on the remote; you can't turn it on/off or change channels from the set-top box (some people are used to this, but my TV is old enough that it has power button on it, and without turning the dtv-pal on, you will hear loud noise of static on channel 3.  That leads to my second issue, the volume seems very low even at the highest setting on DTV pal.  But other than these two issues, I'd recommend the dtv-pal to any other tv-luddites who stil get their TV reception over the air and don't want to have to go out and buy an ATSC (digital) TV yet.

Note that this and all converters only allows your old NTSC TV to pick up stations that will only be broadcast over the air in ATSC (digital) format after Feb 2009.  That doesn't make your old TV digital (it will still have the same lower resolution and "square" form factor as before, and some programs will be displayed in "letter box" format which shows a black border around the program itself to get the right aspect ratio.  The dtv-pal lets you play with formats a bit, there is a button to zoom in or get the full height of the picure if you prefer.

I'm not sure how much power the dtv-pal consumes, but I turn mine off and on via the remote when I'm not watching TV.  The case and AC adapter run a bit warm, so I'm sure it is using a fair amount of power when on; though I'm probably in the minority in being concerned about this, I try to turn it off to save power when it isn't in use.