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Pick Up HDTV Signals Over the Air with a Tuner

Samsung HD Tuner

Did you know you can get HDTV signals over the airwaves? That’s right. You don’t need a fancy or expensive cable package in order to get channels in bright, beautiful HD, and because you live in a huge city like New York there are plenty of channels to be picked up for free.

All you need is an HD tuner such as this Samsung DTB-H260F High Definition Terrestrial Tuner. As you may or may not know, HD signals are becoming standard and the old, blurry, standard def signals are going the way of the Dodo. So that means more channels will be broadcast digitally over the air in the future, and this is how you can pick them all up. If you’re a movie buff who just wants to be able to get the networks in HD on your new TV, don’t waste money on cable; just get a tuner and get your HD channels for free. It’s the sensible move, don’t you agree?

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Published by Adam on May 15th, 2007 and listed in Home Entertainment.

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    Analog signals will be going the way of the dodo but they are being replaced by digital signals. Not all digital signals will be HD. If your TV can't reproduce HD you won't be seeing HD. But you may be able to receive digital TV signals with this.
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    i realy want hdt signal
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    These comments apply to the Samsung DTB-H260F. It will pick up UNSCRAMBLED QAM channels from your cable TV system in addition to over the air signals, It's sometimes hard to discern this from the documentation. The channel numbering will most likely be entirely strange (i.e. channel numbers like 125-3), but the HDTV channels are quite amazing. Often, local HDTV stations are unscrambled, but regular cable boxes prevent you from viewing those channel numbers. I hooked one up to a DVI LCD computer monitor using an HDMI to DVI cable and it looked great (may not work with all LCD monitors?). Beware that connecting it to an older SDTV, while it works (and it will scale the HDTV down to SDTV), lacks any onscreen display (i.e. controls), and is therefore not entirely useful.
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    Almost all network broadcast TV is now in digital format as well as the long existing analog format. Free over-the-air (OTA) digital TV from the ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and PBS network depends on you location relative to the broadcast towers. If you live close to the towers, an indoor TV antenna will work, but if you live more than 20 miles from the towers, you will need an outdoor antenna for optimum reception. The signal flow is antenna to digital (ATSC) tuner to TV.

    To see what may be available in your area, enter your zip code or full address into www.antennaweb.org and when the results are displayed, click on the selection to show "digital" stations only.
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    HDTV signals are currently being broadcast along with the current analog signals. In 2009 the analog signals will no longer be broadcast, so if you want to watch free TV then, you will need to have an HDTV decoder.

    Alot of the new TV's already have HDTV tuners (also called ATSC tuners) built in, so you don't need to get this Samsung tuner (or any other brand) if you plan to buy a new TV. You will only need it if you want to use your old TV to watch HDTV programs. If you do alot of recording of TV shows, there are some DVD recorders that have HDTV decoders built-in so you can use them to replace your VCR.

    The location of the TV/tuner is irrelevant. What matters is the location of your HDTV antenna. If you have a antenna of the roof of your house, chances are you will have get excellent reception. If you don't have a roof antenna, most likely the reception will be weaker than a roof antenna and you will need to move the antenna around to see where you get the best reception.
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    To make it work, you must stand on your head ,and count to 1000 reciting the declaration of independence from memory.............ONLY KIDDING
    You must connect this to a HD antenna and to your TV..The picture will be as good as your TV picture. You will have a black bar on the top and bottom of the screen creating the 16:9 format
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    How does it work? Does this work in amy location? In the house, up or down the two story house?
 

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