Piggie

I have an older Insignia NS-DXA1 with no ATP. (Note ATP is a typo what was designed to cause HTNut to post, so I left it wrong).

It and the Pal Plus hold their own side by side.

The Pal Plus has a much better guide, but I think my Insignia has a slightly better picture.

All in all if I bought again, it would be the Pal Plus.

Of course at least for me, those days are behind me. And in Flea
Bay it sounds like the boxes that were sub par are the one mainly on sale.

The product run for converter boxes was so short lived, it was really almost over by the time which were good and which stunk came to light.

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Still it baffles me how it took until we nearly hit the analog shut off for boxes to even be inexpensive (not counting the coupons). Up until Feb 2008, a box was $200 (granted most of them were also HD). Then with one year until shut off, the boxes flooded the market.

The closest other change was opening of the UHF TV band. It was opened in the 1940s, but applications were frozen until 1952. TV's were required to have a UHF tuner by 1964. So more or less TV manufactures were give 12 years to get with the program (actually they knew it was coming about 10 years before that).

But my point was the only people I knew with UHF converters had TV's from the early 1950's. Our 1954 Zenith had UHF built in. By the late 50's you couldn't find TV's without UHF. Heck by 1962 or so a few people had color though it only came on a few times a year.

So why this time was everything at the last moment? Most of the stations in the country were digital 5 years ago or more. But the TVs were not mostly ATSC ready until a there was about a year to go. There were not any inexpensive converters until a year to go.

Why? I believe because we have become much more so of a market driven society. Just In Time profit only motivated society. To me it's a sign beneficence has given way totally to profit, and common sense to divisive heated conversations.

Welcome to the New World, hope you like the ride.

Eureka

What is ATP?

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The first TV station in the town I grew up in was UHF, but it eventually switched to VHF, leaving lots of useless UHF converters in homes and little bowtie antennas on rooftops. UHF didn't return there until the 1980s.

Piggie

ATP is a typo for PTA, which means Parent Teacher Association, is a typo for TPA, which is the airport designator for Tampa International Airport, which was probably in the context of my post a typo for APT, but then isn't APT where some people live?

I confuse, you decipher...... Fair and Ridiculous.......

staticMHZ

I can see it now, the year 2025, I'm at some junk ridden flea market digging through old boxes and I find an RCA DTA800b. Oh ************! I remember these. How much? a buck? ok i'm sold.

triggerlip

These are people selling converter boxes that they bought with a coupon. The wholesale prices of the converters are way more than they're asking on ebay.

bicker

I don't remember much discussion about resale prices going up after the coupons expired. I think the points made were about new, more "premium" (read: pricey) offerings coming onto the market. I haven't seen that happen yet, though.

Aaron62

Yeah, the only converter box I've seen go up is the DTVPal Plus converter which is a more desirable box among the A/V forums I frequent.