[opendtv] Digital Stream 3150 Plus
- From: "Albert Manfredi" <bert22306@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 13:47:59 -0500
We went to Circuit City yesterday and bought a brand new,
still-not-in-their-inventory-system Digital Stream 3150 Plus. No special
deal, it was the basic $229 price, but I figured if it was anything like the
Accurian, at least we'd have a good chance it would work well.
Turns out, this Digital Stream is virtually identical to the Accurian, in
terms of features and performance. The only differences I could see are that
the component outputs can also be set to RGB (but using the same three RCA
jacks as YPbPr, not the PC-standard RGB multipin connector). The other
difference is that, much to my relief, there is a sort of master volume
control. You press the "select" button while watching TV, and a volume
control bar appears on the screen, along with a basic signal strength meter
and station/program description, which the Accurian also displays. The
volume was set rather low at the factory, which had me a little concerned
until I discovered this additional control. Aside from that, this is about
as close to the Accurian as you can be. The menus are identical.
First thing I did was to set it up downstairs, in place of the Accurian. It
auto-scanned channels and, with the external antennas, found exactly the
same ones the Accurian had found. Good deal.
Then I took the unit upstairs, to "transition" our upstairs setup to ATSC.
With the Radio Shack double bowtie, and some experimentation of course, the
STB found all the local stations, minus the aforementioned WETA (PBS Ch 26)
and minus the aforementioned UPN 20. But it also managed to receive one
Baltimore station, CBS 13, which in digital is of course a UHF channel, as
are all digital channels in this area.
We had marginal reception of NBC 4 at first. I tried the antenna close to
the window, but that didn't help. Turns out, the original position, which
worked best for analog, was still the best. I tried touching one of the VHF
rabbit ears, and that helped a lot. While I was contemplating adding a wire
to that rabbit ear, I tried instead to simply collapse down the other VHF
ear. That did the trick. So now, with the antenna in that one location on
top of the cabinet, all local channels, and CBS 13 from Baltimore, are
available (minus those mentioned).
I can safely say that the experience of receiving ATSC via rabbit ears was
very much the same as fussing with rabbit ears for NTSC, in our case. It
took no longer to find the sweet spot. Walking around does not seem to
affect reception, now that I solved the NBC 4 reception issue by collapsing
the one VHF ear. Perhaps an antenna with more gain, like the Silver Sensor,
would find more Baltimore stations, but then my bet is that it would be more
touchy about all the local stations.
Bert
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