HUMAX Digital ATSC TV Tuner for HDTV Reception
The Humax HFA 100 Tuner and Broadcast Digital TV
I have been interested in over the air digital TV for some time. I bought the Humax HFA100 Tuner as a fairly inexpensive way to find out how good reception would be at my location around 60 miles north of Boston. I have a rooftop antenna with a preamplifier and a rotor. Details follow later. I have no basis for comparison, but I am generally pleased with the Humax. I do not yet have a HDTV display so I am connected to a conventional TV using the provided component video and stereo cables. The tuner provides the choice of several types of connections for HDTV. The tuner was fairly easy to set up by following the on screen menus. The operating manual could be more detailed, but the menus are fairly intuitive and after some trial and error I am now adept at using the various features. You can download the manual from (...)if you want an idea about the features. The tuner does not have a cooling fan so noise is not an issue. I had read some complaints online about noise problems with other brands. The remote control feels very sturdy and aim is not critical. I was able to program it to perform the basic funtions for my TV set: on/off, video source, volume, mute and analog channel changes.  For my sets other settings I use its own remote and menus. Although the tuner is called a set top box (STB) the cabinet designs of many newer TV sets do not provide enough \\"set top\\" to accommodate the unit which is about 12 inches wide inches by 9.5 inches deep. I had to design my own support shelf on top of my TV. The Humax receives ATSC/VSB signals only so in cases where a channel's  digital signal is too weak for reception you will need to use your sets NTSC tuner to get the analog signal instead. There is no antenna output so you cannot daisy chain the Humax tuner with the antenna input on your TV. To get the antenna signal to your TV will require a splitter or coax A-B switch so you can direct the antenna signal to the Humax and/or your TV set or VCR etc. Some other tuners do have an antenna output which is a bit more convenient.  The free onscreen 7 day program guide is a handy feature.  No phone connection is required as the information is taken from a special broadcast signal. The information is sometime lacking for a channel or is incorrect, but that is the fault of the posting service and not the tuner. You can highlight a listing, get a detailed description, and if you want to see the program it is one click away. You can also see a reduced image  with sound of each channels offerings as you go down the listings. I stumbled on this by accident. Somewhere there must be users guide as to how to use all the features of listings screen. During set up the tuner can automatically scan for available channels and will store those with good signals.  Since I am surrounded by stations I had to first point my antenna in the direction where I expected the most hits. (Towards Boston). If I rotated my antenna in another direction and performed another automatic scan then the previously stored channels could get lost. Fortunately there is a menu for scanning for channels manually one at a time so I could test for good signal and add it the list. Deleting unwanted channels is easy.  I currently have the tuner programmed for 17 channels with some duplication of network affliations. Each  channel can simulcast up to 4 programs at a time. Only PBS and PAX seem to make much use of this capability. On analog TV my PBS stations only have children's programs during the daytime hours. With digital I can now also get a choice of three programs for grownups. It should offer some relief during long PBS fund raisers as well. PAX does a combination of paid and religious programs. I can't vouch for its HDTV performance, but the tuner converts 1080i and 720p signals to 480i for my TV just fine. For 16:9 images you can either watch  \\"letter boxed\\", or at full width but vertically stretched to fill the screen, or cropped to 4:3  full screen . I can't vouch for Dolby5.1 audio performance either as I do not have a \\"home theater\\" sound system. I recently watched a \\"Live From Lincoln Center\\" concert on PBS and the video was sharp as a tack and the sound through my stereo system was of CD quality. I am glad I decided to gain access to free digital broadcast television. The tuner supports closed captioning with a choise of fonts and sizes, alternate audio, and parental controls with a password. The Humax HFA100 got me into the game at competitive price. After about a week of watching I have been spoiled by the quality of digital TV provided by the Humax tuner and will now only watch analog if I can't get the digital signal. If you are ready to give broadcast digital TV a try I recommend it. What follows are some more general observations about the vagaries of digital TV reception, antennas etc.       As I said, I bought the Humax as a way to find out how well I could pick up over the air digital television. No local retailers, including the big box stores, had any tuner boxes in operation. Everything is run off cable or satellite feeds. Only a few even had any tuners for sale even though they sell lots of so called HDTV displays that have no built in tuner of their own. No sales people could report any feed back from customers about over the air reception. Everyone has cable or satellite service. A few salesmen tried to convince me that I would need a special \\"digital antenna\\" which is untrue. I am not ready to buy into an HDTV display because of the current cost and because the technology is still changing rapidly. Many cannot really display 1920 by 1080 resolution. Good old tube type HDTV sets are still the best deal for price and performance. The big screen sets (30 inches and up) weigh a ton. I knew that I would have to do something before too long since the plug is supposedly going to be pulled on analog broadcasting in the next year or two and I would need a digital tuner in any case.  I was also having some reception problemson analog TV that I hoped a digital tuner might cure which it did. Ironically some of it was due to interference from digital TV signals on the same channels as analog ones. I have a large combination VHF/UHF rooftop antenna. (Equivalent to the current Winegard HD7084P) It is about 25 feet above the ground and is equipped with a mast top preamplifier (Equivalent to Winegard's  AP-8780) and an old Alliance rotor ( No longer in business). I am getting channels from up to 60-85 miles away.  Antenna direction is much more critical than with analog signals. My old rotor works in 10 degree steps and sometimes just one step can be difference between reception and no reception. Unlike analog, where you can watch with a poor signal, digital is pretty much all or nothing. Reception seems do vary due to atmospheric conditions and time of day. I searched on the internet to find the power output of the transmitters in my area and can see that the channels with low power are the ones for which reception comes and goes.  The Humax can give a signal strength display on screen and I can  sometimes see it jump up and down over short intervals of time. I use it help me position my antenna. Sometimes antenna direction is more critical than at other times. At this time of year (June) my antenna is \\"looking\\" through heavy foliage on surrounding trees. I suspect that reception of weak signals might be less fussy in the winter after the leaves are down. I can get WMTW, which has its transmitter 85 miles away on the top of Mt. Washington at 6300 feet, with just about any antenna position so the height of a transmitter is definitely is a factor. With analog TV there comes a time during the summer when I get distant stations \\"skipping\\" in on top of local one which can create a video and audio mess. I will be curious to see how the digital tuner handles the problem. If you live in an urban setting with tall buildings then multi-path (reflected) signals can be a big problem. The same signal isarrives at your antenna at different times and the tuner has to sort out which one to use.  The ATSC/VSB (Advanced Television Standards Committee/ Vestigial Sideband Modulation) tuner chips have been improved over the year to deal with this problem. The latest are the so called \\"fifth generation\\" chips, but good luck trying to find out what is in a given tuner. LG/Zenith supposedly uses the latest technology in some of their HDTV models.  Winegard markets their `Square Shooter\\" antenna which has also been engineered to deal with multi-path problems in an urban location. I don't believe it is meant for fringe reception. You should also realize that although currently the UHF band (14-69) is being used for digital broadcasting, some stations that have analog VHF (1-13) allotments plan to keep them and will switch them to digital when the time comes so you may still want an antenna that can get VHF. Many of the old antenna companies are long gone- \\"killed by cable.\\" Terk is now marketing rooftop antennas which I believe are supplied by Winegard.  Just about all the homeowner type rotor companies are gone as well. The Channel Master type rotor design is sold under several brand names and unlike my old Alliance rotor it can be positioned more or less continuously for more accurate aiming. Winegard has announced their \\"AccuMax\\" rotor which has some interesting features, but it is not yet in production. If you get a rooftop antenna stay away from chimney mounts. It's structurally bad for the chimney and bad for the antenna because of corrosive smoke and fumes. I have my antenna connection arranged so that I can easily disconnect it when a thunderstorms threaten or when I will be away from home for more than a day or two. Sorry that this commentary has turned into \\"War and Peace\\", but I would have appreciated similar advice in the past.