Digital TV Tuners

Digital TV Tuners (ATSC Tuners)

A DTV Tuner decodes digital, over-the-air (DTT) broadcasts from your local television company. Most people don't know that you can receive free HDTV broadcasts via these broadcasts. DTV tuners are also known as ATSC tuners. Unlike most analog televisions, a DTV tuner can decode the digital signal that over 1,300 American television stations broadcast.

DTV Tuners usually display the analog station that most people are familiar with, even though the tuner is really tuned into another station. This is part of the confusing digital television transition. The FCC has given stations two channels - the original analog channel and the new digital one. The analog channel will be taken back when Congress decides when it should stop analog broadcasts.

A DTV reads the digital stream at 19 Mbps. At this data rate, the television station can deliver 1 HDTV channel, 3 EDTV streams, or 9 SDTV programs. Television stations often multicast or send multiple channels like 9-1, 9-2 and 9-3. Thus the station is broadcasting 3 channels of content in their one 6 MHz bandwidth. Go here to find out more about the radio spectrum.

I recommend the Humax HFA100 DTV Tuner that sells for about $210. This is a pretty basic model that has an HDMI interface for your TV. Samsung's SIR-T451 DTV Tuner is also a good bet and it costs about $250.

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