brayzie

I'm trying to set up a tv tuner for a friend that doesn't have cable. They have an HDTV. I went to antennaweb.org and put in the zipcode and it told me the channels that would be received and recommended a mutli-directional HDTV antenna.

Got that, an RCA SLIVR.

But then I read that some HD TVs are NTSC and some are ATSC, and that if it's the latter you'll need a digital converter. Got that too, a NAXA coverter box with built-in digital tv tuner.

My question is this: are these things pretty easy to install?
Will I need to get an addtional HDMI cable for some reason, or another coaxial cable (the RCA tuner already has a built in one).

Eddie W

I'm not sure if there was ever and HDTV model that had only an NTSC tuner. I think from day one they had both digital & analog. So you may not even need to box unless the TV has no tuner at all. And if it's got a coaxial input, I'm betting it is able to pull in OTA broadcasts on it's own.

the other downside is that these converter boxes are primarily used to convert ATSC signals to older tube type TV's, so it's probably going to output SD at best. If the box has an HDMI output, you're good & will need a cable. If only red/yellow/white, yuck.

These things are pretty easy to set up, but I would connect the antenna directly to the TV first & see if you can get signals before adding an unnecessary component.

Alan Smithee

NTSC is the analog standard, ATSC is the digital standard. Unless their TV is a projection model, it more than likely has an HD tuner built in already. Most "converter boxes" will only output standard-def even if the station is HD, and are made for older non-HD TVs.

kefrank

FWIW, plenty of early HDTVs did not have an ATSC tuner. The FCC didn't require them to be in televisions until 2005 and then it was only required on certain sizes. By 2007, all HDTVs had to have an ATSC tuner.

I got my first HDTV in 2003. It was a 42" rear projection CRT and it did not have an ATSC tuner built in.

maspero

Thank you

brayzie

Thanks for the replies everyone. It was incredibly easy. Just used the HDTV antenna into the back, went to the TV's menu options to put "Antenna" and search for channels, and it got a huge amount of channels. I was impressed.

I tried to see if it had an internal tuner/antenna and did search for channels without the additonal TV antenna, but it only got two versions of a church channel and both were all fuzzy.