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HD Digital Tuners
Dish6000 vs. Samsung
SIR-T150
Remote Control
Both remotes were simple, easy to use, and comfortable. The
T150 has a little joystick for moving the on-screen pointer similar to a PC
mouse control. The 6000 uses radio frequency that has a much farther range
than the T150's infrared. |
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Signal Meter
Dish6000
The 6000 has a separate menu
for adding channels. The signal meter has a 0-100% bar scale. I find this
much more useful for fine tuning and comparing signal strengths. |
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Samsung SIR-T150
The T150 has a transparent
window that displays two indicators. The top indicator is a little arrow
above a scale. The lower indicator is a bar scale that extends from a
transmitter icon. You have to count the number of bars since there is no
numerical display. |
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Program Guide
Dish6000
The 6000 does not display any
program information for local digital channels. It does keep satellite
channels in the same guide, because of this, the receiver may have to
download new information (about 30 sec) before the guide will display. |
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Samsung SIR-T150
The T150 displays program
information on some channels and displays a small picture of the current
channel in the upper left corner. It takes a very long time to retrieve
the channels information (about 2 min) so I never bothered to use it. |
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Picture Quality
Both receivers displayed a
equal quality picture. The T150's picture was a little darker. The smaller
PIP is from the T150. This is not caused by the PIP, I swapped inputs and
the Dish6000 would still show a brighter picture in the PIP frame. |
PIP=T150
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Signal Reception #1
The only accurate way to
compare reception is to run both receivers simultaneously. I put a 2-way
splitter on the coax from the antenna and ran a coax to each receiver
input. I then connected the analog output from the receivers to the TV. I
could then display the same channels using Picture-in-a-Picture (PIP). It
was easy to see the tuning threshold of each receiver by rotating the
antenna until the picture starts to drop out. The Dish6000 would always
begin to drop out before the T150 as can be seen in this example picture. |
PIP=T150
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Signal Reception #2
In this test, I am trying to
tune in UPN channel 66. This is a difficult channel to get at my location.
The T150 was able to display a broken up picture while the Dish6000 would
not lock on to a picture at all. The Dish6000 needs at least a 45-46%
signal before a picture will display, and 48% to keep picture solid and
locked in. In this test, which I monitored for 15 minutes, the T150 never
locked in a solid picture for longer than 1 second, but it did display a
broken up picture without completely dropping out to a black screen. |
PIP=T150
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Aspect Ratio Settings
This was a very big problem for
me. I have a Panasonic RPTV that does not do vertical compression.
The T150 will not show a
letterboxed widescreen picture on a 4:3 set unless the TV can perform a
vertical squeeze. In "Full" mode, you get black side bars and a
over-scanned, vertically stretched image from top to bottom. In "Zoom"
mode, you get a non-stretched image that fills the screen by cutting off
both sides. Neither is acceptable.
The Dish600 has a option which
allows letterboxing on 4:3 sets that cannot do vertical compression (see
picture).
Also, the T150 does not have
any image centering controls. The Dish6000 will allow you to shift the
image up, down, left, and right. |
Dish6000 Aspect Ratio Menu
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Conclusion
- The T150 has a slightly better OTA tuner than the Dish6000. I would not
replace a Dish6000 with the T150, but if you are looking for a new OTA tuner,
the T150 is one of the best available right now.
- The Dish6000 costs less and also has the capability to tune in HDTV and SD
channels from four different satellites on the Dish Network. This makes the
Dish6000 the best bargain.
- If your 4:3 set does not do vertical compression, forget about using the
T150. Maybe the T160 will have better aspect ratio controls.
- The T150 cannot tune in satellite signals, but the upcoming T160
supposedly will.
Note: Pictures of TV screen were taken with a Olympus D-340L using no
flash from a distance of four feet in a dark room.
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