HD receiver, which one? (1 Viewer)

[dan fritzen]

I am looking at buying a HD receiver soon for fall football in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

I have no idea what brand or how much to spend. Any suggestions, I can go price/performance level or high priced if it has a feature I need.

I own a Sony 34XBR800 with DVI, although it sounds like it is not HDCP compatible.

Does the Samsung SIR-T151 HD receiver have sony internals components?

Also any suggestions for the best price, I am willing to go online but have reservations when spending so much so it has to be a quality online place.

 

[Leo_P]

Make sure you check this out. It's a pretty informative list of all the STB's available.
Good luck!

 

[adamKI]

I own the 151 and it has worked very well for me - for the price, I think it's the best STB available (about $300 from J and R) unless you NEED DVI or firewire. I definitely recommend getting an outdoor antenna for best results though (and that's with ANY HDTV set-top-box).

Also, you could afford yourself a bit of future-proofing by stepping up to the SIR-T351. Which is the same as the 151 but adds a DVI output. It seems to be priced about $50-100 more than the 151.

Good luck!

 

[Jim A. Banville]

Samsung HDTV receiver is $289 at Sam's.

 

[Tamer C]

I have a 36XBR450 and I'm waiting for the Sony SAT-HD300 receiver to use with Over the air and DTV. If you don't need DTV then you can get a Over the air receiver only.

 

[dan fritzen]

Tamer I heard that Direct TV HD is not quite HD since it is compressed, is that true?

Also can you have the lowest package and still order HD with Direct TV?

Anyone have the link to the HD antenna site where it will tell me what I can recieve signal wise?

 

[adamKI]

Dan,

It's www.antennaweb.org

Hope this helps,
adam

 

[dan fritzen]

thanks Adam.

 

[Tamer C]

Dan,
I'm not sure about DirecTV HD channels being compressed in any way. They now have an HDTV package for 10.99 a month. So you can get the lowest package plus that one, but you won't get HBO HD or Showtime HD.