It works fine for the few very strong stations close to me like my local PBS.
No there are no other factors in play because now I just put my old magnavox converter back in place of this new one. Changed nothing else. Took the antenna coax (rg6) and the cable to the TV off the new one and put them onto the old magnavox, did a channel scan, and started watching channel 7, my local ABC station. The new box never did recognize that station, never displayed it in the past couple weeks I was using it, and never saved it as a viable station during multiple channel scans.
i have done slight tweaks to the antenna direction in the past, but not at this time when I did the change out from the new box back to the old one.
I watched channel 7 for a couple hours with the old box, then it started to drop out. it is not a direct los, not the strongest station. probably depends on fog, humidity, etc. long ago we discussed how there is a mountain between me and the main broadcast antenna (Sutro Tower) in San Francisco.
Scanning with the old magnavox, it saves many weak stations witch will never display. The new box when you scan seems to only save the very strong that can be expected to (almost) always display.
The new box, nothing wrong with it if you have strong stations.
Old magnavox the remote is so bad it is almost impossible to use, you have to push hard on the buttons. New box has what seems to be a cheap remote that doesn't seem to work very well even though it is brand new.
I will try the new box some more and also check out some of the other features like recording with a flash drive and let you know.