[Jeffery71]

Hi all,

I am quite a distance from my local stations. I have an AM21 and I just did some checking. With the AM21 hooked up some of my locals will not come in or are very choppy/pixeled/green ..

I have a converter box. its a magnavox brand one of those 40 dollar coupon deals... If I unhook the cable to the AM21 and run it through the Magnavox into my tv. Then the channels come in really well. If I switch it back to the AM21 then its back to being real choppy or no signal. Do I have a problem with my AM21 or is the AM21 some how just not a very good tunner compared to the Magnvox?


Thanks

Jeff T.

 

[Grentz]

Could be not as good of a tuner.

You could try getting an amplifier for your antenna if you do not already have one (or a bigger one if you already have one).

 

[hasan]

Hi all,

I am quite a distance from my local stations. I have an AM21 and I just did some checking. With the AM21 hooked up some of my locals will not come in or are very choppy/pixeled/green ..

I have a converter box. its a magnavox brand one of those 40 dollar coupon deals... If I unhook the cable to the AM21 and run it through the Magnavox into my tv. Then the channels come in really well. If I switch it back to the AM21 then its back to being real choppy or no signal. Do I have a problem with my AM21 or is the AM21 some how just not a very good tunner compared to the Magnvox?

Thanks

Jeff T.

The AM21 is definitely superior to the Magnavox. I've tested both, and the same signal showing 40 to 70 percent on the Magnavox is 85 to 88 on the AM21. Something isn't right. Both are measuring a variant of bit-error-rate, so it is possible to compare them. Further, I have compared the performance of the AM21 to my Samsung HL-R5667W internal tuner, and it is every bit as good as the Sammy.

There is no way the Magnavox box is equal to my Sammy, period.

 

[Redlinetire]

The AM21 is definitely superior to the Magnavox. I've tested both, and the same signal showing 40 to 70 percent on the Magnavox is 85 to 88 on the AM21. Something isn't right. Both are measuring a variant of bit-error-rate, so it is possible to compare them. Further, I have compared the performance of the AM21 to my Samsung HL-R5667W internal tuner, and it is every bit as good as the Sammy.

There is no way the Magnavox box is equal to my Sammy, period.

To be fair, the type of antenna (style, powered or not, etc), distance from towers, multipath issues, weather, terrain, etc. etc. all play into perceived 'performance' of a tuner box.

I could easily see where one box works better than another under a certain set of conditions.

 

[houskamp]

To be fair, the type of antenna (style, powered or not, etc), distance from towers, multipath issues, weather, terrain, etc. etc. all play into perceived 'performance' of a tuner box.

I could easily see where one box works better than another under a certain set of conditions.

Yep, the good old "art" of ota...
might be just a little aiming adjustment and they both work (or the am21 does and the other doesn't :lol: )

 

[hasan]

To be fair, the type of antenna (style, powered or not, etc), distance from towers, multipath issues, weather, terrain, etc. etc. all play into perceived 'performance' of a tuner box.

I could easily see where one box works better than another under a certain set of conditions.

Both the Magnavox and the RCA DTA 800 are bargain basement boxes. The tuners in them are not very good in two particular areas. Indeed, different conditions could produce different results, but I wouldn't do any betting on either of the above boxes compared to a good tuner like the AM21. They are only slightly less finicky than the HR20 series tuners, and the AM21 is considerably better than the HR20 (although there are adjustments that can be done to get the HR20-700 tuner to perform very, very well, but it is a delicate balancing act. What I have noticed about the AM21 is that it doesn't require this special sort of care.

I'm not discouraging playing around with the AM21 this person has...it may be that the signal is too strong, or too weak, or he has a particularly bad multi-path problem...but in the case of the latter, neither the Magnavox, or the RCA do very well with multi-path, but their sensitivity is not all that bad. (I've seen hundreds of them, btw, and conducted many experiments with them using marginal antenna systems)

 

[ptalbot]

I had a similar issue recently...and this was after my AM21s had already been installed and working. All of a sudden...no OTA reception. Plug the coax (delivering signal from a 75mi VHF/UHF in the attic) directly into the TV, voila, all was well. Ended up getting a RCA signal amplifier at BestBuy and this won the day for me. Don't know what changed to cause me to have to have the amplifier, but I am getting the OTA signals loud and clear now.

 

[Jeffery71]

Thanks everyone,


I dont' think it is the weather in this case. The test I did was just a matter of changing the cable and only took a few seconds to change them back and fourth each time the magnavox was better than the AM21. Only a few seconds past to change the cable.

I'm trying to decide now if I should get another AM21 or get another singnal amplifier.

It would seem that there is possibly a problem with my AM21 if others here have found it to be better than the magnavox and yet for me the magnavox is clearly better.


I am going to replace my old antenna with a new Winegaurd hd7698p, Maybe I will wait till I replace it and check the singnals again.


Thankgs again!

Jeff T.