garage sale find:Motorola ATSC receiver box

[DavGoodlin]

Good find with that box. I never see even used coupon converters for sale anywhere!

I was looking pretty closely at tuners back during those early years (2000) because a local PBS station was simulcasting an ASTC signal. I also remember comparing reviews in trade magazines of that Motorola, a Samsung SIR 351 and Zenith HDV-420 among few others. For reasons I do not recall, the Motorola was panned in favor of the others.

There seemed to be a conspiracy among the retailers selling HD monitors at the time to exclude OTA tuners in favor of selling satellite subscriptions.
The only ASTC tuner I saw for sale locally was the Motorola HDT101 at a Circuit City store, now defunct with HH Gregg in that spot today.
Remebering the review, I did not get the Motorola.

I ended up ordering a Samsung SIRT-451 from another now-defunct retailer, Tweeter.
The Samsung has its quirks also but its been performing well for the last 8 years.
I paid $100 for a Zenith HDV-420 on e-pay about 4 years ago, and it also performs well albeit with its own issues.