staticMHZ

Jay

Great review!

Seems hard to believe that OTA box manufactures are not adding any type of ROM chip or some type of memory chip to fix this. Heck, even my stove will come on with the correct time after a power failure.

Great info. Again, how much did the manufature save with not adding buttons on the unit itself? Probably pennys?

Aaron62

I can't imagine a lot of profit in an $40 OTA receiver. When the big stores can sell it for the same price as the $40 coupon, I'm thinking that the manufacures have cut some corners to keep the pricing down.

staticMHZ

The biggest issue is no buttons on the box. What are people supposed to do if they lose the remote? They must have made it like this to see how much more money they can squeeze in.

jbondi

If this is the DTV converter box that Walmart is selling, I must say that it is junk! I just got a Zenith DTV converter box from Circuit City and it is great. I plan to buy another Zenith today!

staticMHZ

yes it is the one walmart has, it sucks big time, but I'll keep it for a spare unit still. Might come in handy.

my ARTEC pulls in more channels then this one.

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cowboyup4christ

the magavox is mainly for urban intercity use where transmitters are close and in one location for fringe and deep fringe areas it is not much and I have told my local walmart that they should not sell them in this area as we are deep fringe, but they say it is a good box, they also sell the rca which is better. but they push the magnavox must be a higher profit margin.

DTVuser2009

How's the Zoom function? on my Zenith while it's a great box any type of signal that shows up as 4:3 on the OSD is 'postage-stamped' which means if you have a 25" SDTV or a HDTV in SD-mode it will only be a 13" image in dead-center and it will say 'Aspect Ratio cannot be changed' which means i must live with 12" of my nice big screen dead-space.

I heard this box overcomes that by letting you zoom regardless of the signal mode, is this true? i want to know before wasting another $50 on a box with the same limitation.

Orrymain

Thanks for this. This is the one my sister saw today at Walmart and it was the only one they had. I'm not sure what she's going to do now. I'll be passing on this information to her, although she wasn't real interested in it anyway. She suspected that the low price was just a little too low.

divxhacker

Wrong, it's to keep the profitability abnormally high. If you meant wholesale pricing for retailers, then you're right. It sounds like its wholesale price is 2 and a half dollars each by the container-load. (one of those big trailer boxes you see going from the port.)

I plan to buy one on eBay, but I'm not spending more than $7 for THIS box plus shipping, without the coupons.

(by the way, I do have above average knowledge in PCB designing, assembly line construction, and know how to shop sourcebooks for parts. That's how I know these things are made ultra-cheap. )