Best/cheapest box for receiving Broadcast HD channels?!

[geoffkin]

I don't have an HDTV, but I want to be able to watch a certain broadcast HD only channel on my regular TV. So I just need an antenna and an HD receiver box, right?
We have an old Dish network box with card, is it possible to get that to work for watching my off the air HD channel, even if I am not subscribing to any Dish services at the moment?

 

[Matthias99]

Please don't crosspost.

You can't use your Dish box for OTA HDTV. They use a different transmission spec.

You need an HDTV receiver. There are many available at fine electronics retailers near you.

Building an HTPC with an OTA HDTV card will work -- and may be the best/cheapest option if you want to record OTA HDTV -- but it's certainly not brain-dead simple.

 

[geoffkin]

Don't want to record, just watch. The boxes out there are close to $200 OUCH!

 

[yiranhu]

If you want, here's a solution: You need a PC for this to work

1. buy a HDTV tuner card (plenty of options). Search for the word ATSC in tuner card catagory in Newegg...
2. Get one of those PVR softwares install it and ur done. WatchHDTV is simplest of them all and works great!! and it uses very little computing resource...
3. Recording is actually easy... the hard part is getting the recorded thing onto a DVD, since this requires a MPEG muxer...
4. Connect your TV to your video card so that you can watch this on TV directly...

cost ~ $70 to $130 bucks depends on your card choice... HD quality is amazing...

 

[geoffkin]

Do the HDTV's come with a built in HD Tuner these days?? Or would I still need to buy an HD Tuner box to watch the off the air channels with an antenna??

If the box itself is almost $200, I may as well buy an HDTV if it's included and get to WATCH them in HD?!

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: geoffkin
Do the HDTV's come with a built in HD Tuner these days?? Or would I still need to buy an HD Tuner box to watch the off the air channels with an antenna??

There's a whole bunch of marketing terms related to this. Some HDTVs are HD-capable and some are HD-ready. Short answer: it depends on the TV. For OTA (i.e. over-the-air) HD without a box/card, you will need one that has a built-in ATSC tuner.

If the box itself is almost $200, I may as well buy an HDTV if it's included and get to WATCH them in HD?!

For PCs, I believe there are ATSC tuner cards for the sub-$100 range. In fact, there's a dual-tuner (i.e. two channels at once) HD box with an ethernet connection that will sit out on the network and allow your PCs to watch HDTV -- at about $170.

EDIT: clarified some information and updated prices

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
You can't use your Dish box for OTA HDTV. They use a different transmission spec.

Depends on what model box you have. A lot of them do tune ATSC. Probably still worth looking up just in case.

 

[KutterMax]

I have a Sharp 50" LCD that came with a built-in OTA tuner and it works extremely well. A lot of the new TV's are shipping with them built-in now.

On my PC I have a ATI 650 tuner card - it works well but the Sharp pulls in the signals a little better (same antenna on both).

I also have a HD set-top tuner box collecting dust - I bought it a little of a year ago at RadioShack (can't remember brand name of the top of my head) - it was highly recommended at that time. However I disliked it - it didn't pull the singles in well at all and had a terrible slow guide. The newer generation Samsung boxes are much better.