HDTV ATSC Tuner Quality

[sambat]

I have two Toshiba sets that, apart for their other shortcomings, have problems with some stations that my Hauppauge tuner card handle well.
How do brands match up when it comes to tuning marginal stations.

[redwudz]

I think that's too 'generic' of a question to easily answer. Brands of tuner cards or brands of TVs?

With HD TV, if the signal isn't strong enough, then it generally won't display at all. SD TV, you would still get a signal, but it could be 'snowy' or fade in and out due to atmospheric changes.

And I suspect the 'weaker' tuners sometimes reject the weaker stations by design to cut down on interference from other stations in a urban environment. Most of them were probably designed for cable use and those should be strong signals. With OTA setups, depends on your antenna, amplifier (If used), cabling, etc.

I know, not much help with your original question, but adding more detail may help. The model of your Hauppauge card and the model of your Toshiba TVs anyway.

It's difficult to compare tuners as the tuner module may not be built by the TV (Or tuner card) manufacturer.

I use a HomeRun LAN tuner for my OTA HDTV. I have a 36" boom Yagi antenna with a amplifier in the attic and I can get one station about 100 miles away. But I suspect that it's fairly high up and still line of sight. I don't have any regular TVs for comparison.

No idea what brand of tuner the HomeRun uses. My local stations are running very high power transmitters and I can pick them up with just a piece of wire hanging out of the coax input. The mountains around here block most other distant OTA signals.

[usually_quiet]

I presume you mean ATSC/QAM tuners. How old are these Toshiba TVs? Newer digital TVs have better tuners than the older ones.

The only digital TVs I have experience with are a 2007 Toshiba 4:3 20-inch CRT TV and a 2008 Samsung 16:9 26-inch LCD TV. In my opinion, the Samsung's tuner is better but it should be. The Samsung cost almost 3 times as much as the Toshiba.

[sambat]

The Hauppauge tuner was purchased 2011 while the sets were purchased in 2009 - all are used for OTA only.
The sets are 20HL67 and 26HL67.
I note also that the sets have a much longer pause between selecting a channel and displaying it compared to the PC card.
all feed off the same splitter.
The rotor antenna is set to favour the location of the US stations (my main Canadian channels are 180 degrees from them, but it's the same handicap for the PC tuner which pulls it in).

[redwudz]

Do you have a RF amplifier installed? It's hard to judge OTA signal strength unless the Hauppague or the Toshiba has some sort of signal strength meter. I used a amp because I have a attic antenna and it goes to a distribution panel for all the rooms in the house. I thought it could use a bit of boost.

I'm guessing you may have already tried the TVs directly connected without the spiltter, but splitters do drop the signal strength a little. And the split is not aways the same between the outputs.

[sambat]

Yes, I have a masthead amp installed - the sets signal strength meters indicate the US stations at 100.
I have two Canadian stations which are co-located (Channel 32 and Channel 9) - CH 9 is 90-100, 32 is 40-50 on the meter.

http://www.michiguide.com/dials/tv/cico32.html

http://www.michiguide.com/dials/tv/cbet.html