I have had this item over a month. It has performed well; installation was according to the enclosed instructions. A call to the support office was handled efficiently and warmly, a good surprise. To this day, this item hos provided the service as advertised; we are very please with this product. Coby ATSC Standard-Definition Converter Box DTV102, Black
Converter boxes will become increasingly scarce next few months. Prefered brands sold out on Amazon, so got this one. ALLOWS Analog PassThrough. It does have menu choise to set Time Zone, but NO option to Turn Off Day-Light Savings which may be issue in Arizona. The "Program Guide" will only go ONE program into future (some brands go 3 - 4 hours ahead) Big annoyance, is the COBY Remote that comes with it, TURNS OFF Sanyo TV its connected to, when you push "Up Channel" button! and other buttons on COBY remote cause various menus & input channels on TV to pop up at inopportune times! I've notice COBY remote for DVD player I have does same thing on TVs in Hotel Rooms! I DID like the menu option that lets you program screen orientation (widescreen, letterbox, full) to be "Set By Program" which is where I set it. One odd thing about this DTV box (I have 3 other brands and they just have visual) is for the Channel Signal Strength Bar it ALSO has audible BEEPING coinciding with signal strength! Was going to send it back because it interferes with TV set, but decided to work around problems and keep box, (push "Up Channel" button again, turns TV set back on!) as my preferred brands (GE, RCA) are sold out!
My Digital Stream box quit after 9 mos. so I bought this one. You should know that unlike the Digital Stream box, this one has no provision for operating the TV it is connected to. So you must use one remote to control TV volume and on/ off , and another to change channels. The COBY box did not pass analog channels as promised (yes, I turned it off). It also was not able to see some of the channels the Digital Stream box could. But the DS box costs more than twice as much as the COBY. I guess you get what you pay for.
This converter box works really well. It has a signal strength meter which is really cool, so you can actually see the signal strength increase/decrease as you move the antenna. The on screen menus and guides are set up very well. The box is absolutely perfect for any tv that doesn't have a built-in digital tuner.
My only complaint (and it's a common one with this product) is the remote. It really only likes to work in a few certain spots. So, sometimes you're just clicking away with no results on the screen. It's frustrating, but luckily I don't have a lot of channels to run through.
Of course, like most boxes, you really need that remote because the box itself doesn't feature a lot of buttons on it.
This box works as advertised. Unlike the first one we bought, the APEX unit.
Overall, the remote works better, the picture is better, and since we don't have an HD TV, we can set this box to eliminate that annoying little box display in the middle of our 32" TV.
So far it's a good product at a good price.
And for those with poor reception? It's NOT the box, it's your antenna.
The first one I received worked for about 5 minutes and then died. I received a new one about a week later and returned the defective one. The new one seems to be ok so far. The picture quality is pretty good, but I would have preferred that there be an S-video jack on the back in addition to the composite one. I don't know why that feature seems so hard to come by on these converter boxes. The menu is ok, but pretty basic. The lack of a volume control is annoying because you always have to have your tv or other remote handy to adjust the volume as needed. All in all it's not a bad converter box, but there are certainly better ones out there. In my opinion they're pretty much all overpriced. This one should be selling for about $15-$20, not $50, but it's a classic case of manufacturers knowing that they have you over a barrel because without one of these converter boxes, your old analog tv is basically a very large paperweight.
The unit works fine. I think my problem is my antenna. My reception is not as good as I would like on certain channels. I do not have a big choice of channels but I mainly wanted it for the local channels anyway. What is really nice is not having to pay for cable or satellite! - Digital Tv Converter - Dtv Converter - Converter Box - Action'
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