RCA DHT235A 3.5 inch portable digital color TV
 

I just got one of these gizmos. Digital means ATSC.
Its very portable with a built- in antenna extending to about 12 inches.
It claims 720p but that's a lie, I read somewhere that it really is 480x234,
and that looks about right. But that's OK for the size. Runs
on 4 AA cells. It says on it that it actually is a Digital Stream.

Does it work? Well, yes. Our closest station is 12 miles and
others are up to 30 miles. I found no place outdoors
or indoors near a window where I could get zero
stations if I moved it around a bit.

It only works while walking on the two closest stations
and if you have the antenna set at a quarter wave and don't
move too fast closer to or farther away from the station.

Does it work on all "local" stations? Yes, and in say 20
% of places it works on all of them (by place I mean within
a two foot radius).

But it has a disastrous fault: you can only add stations by "scanning",
you can't add them by hand nor does it allow adding scans ...
any scan clears the station list first. It has an external antenna input.
I connected that to my main "big" (i.e. Radio Shack double
bowtie) antenna that gets all stations at once and scanned. This
put all stations in memory so I can tune to a station and
move it around until it works.

Reports at Amazon says it works much better at 5 miles or
less from the transmitter.

Doug McDonald

Don't you have a choice of "Rescan" or "Update" when entering the scan menu? "Update" keeps the previously scanned channels and adds any new channels found.

jr

Nope! At least, its not there and not described in the manual. There may
be a hidden way but I did not find it.

Interesting! I find it odd that they would have deleted such an important function on the newer/RCA branded models. My RCA DMT335R, which also tunes "mobile DTV" and my similar looking older version which is branded "MyGOtv (DHT235)" both have an easily accessible "update" function... pops right up after "auto search" is selected with the menu button. :scratch2:

jr

Both sets: http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...0&postcount=10

If it "pops up" .... how does it appear? Is it in the same list as "scan"?
Maybe I'm missing it somehow.

The scan flaw is a deal breaker for a set using antenna. Before
I got out just before the mandate many sets were like that.
You couldnt even enter the "correct" channel number & get
a signal. Even that way with the early Sonys at least. Never
tried it on my newer Sony, only get 1 HD intermitantly
upstairs anyhows................
What they need is an add / del & field strength function.
Trouble is most customers cant comprehend ch5 being on ch26
& would give up finding them anyways.

Besides, if its digital it has to be good, dont ya know........

73 Zeno:smoke:

Ok on the "myGOtv" , I hit the menu button, select "auto search", hit enter, I see a screen that allows selection of "rescan" or "update".

On the RCA, I hit the menu button, select "auto search" , hit enter, and I get a small box with choices of "update" or "rescan".

On both tvs I also see a "quicksearch" function which allows selection of a specific channel, which I have never used. This is possibly *could* be used to add a specific channel, or perhaps merely tune to a channel that has already been scanned.

jr

On mine its:

hit Menu -- this gets Picture

right (vol up) four times gets you Channel

down (channel down) gets you Auto Scan

right gets you Scan All Channels

right again actually does the scan

The really is no Update, nor way to select channel without scan.

This would be a deal breaker if I didn't have the "gets all channels"
antenna. It takes over two minutes to scan channels.

Stupid design.

Note the bottom button on my tvs is the "enter"... what is your bottom button? What happens if you navigate to "update" and hit the bottom button? If they have really eliminated the "update" function, I agree tis a bad design.

jr

Nothing happens if I hit Enter at either Auto Scan or Scan All Channels.
There is no Update. At those two prompts you need to
hit Right (volume up).

For grins, I just borrowed a brand new blue RCA DHT235A from a friend and observed the following:

Does not appear to appear to tune NTSC.
Simplified menu structure:
No "update" mode
No "quick search" mode

Bummer! However it does appear to be *slightly* more sensitive and the OSG appears to offer more info.

jr

It does do NTSC.

Yes indeed, it did find the NTSC ch 4 output from my satellite receiver!

With the older menu structure, one had to select "ATSC" or "NTSC" from the menu... this integrated mix of the two would likely be more "user friendly" for most consumers. but I still favor the older firmware, with more options.

jr

On my Sharper Image 7 inch set I have to scan the whole band to add channels.

I dont understand how come they just make the tuners pick up the signal like the old sets did without the scanning.

Now I'm trying to find the right video format that will play on the set .

The instructions said it will play video files.I tried every format and had no luck.

The older version(s) of the 3.5" set(s) mentioned above indeed had a menu item that allowed a single channel to be entered directly (Quick search). I suspect that this feature was confusing to many of the general public that have no knowledge of the "real RF channel" that is being used and only know the station by the "virtual channel" number. Many tvs/convertor boxes still offer some form of "direct entry", but it is likely that few, other than DXers would care.

jr