Solid picture

Loud fan

I have had this unit about 6 months. I originally purchased it for only the DirectTV NFL Sunday ticket. However, the picture is so good that I totally replaced my digitial cable with DirectTv. Especially when getting an HDTV signal.

I have also experienced excellent sound running through the audio through my Sony TA-9000ES using the Optical Digital.

Overall I consider this an outstanding product.

great picture

everything else

VGA output did not work, interconnect with Pioneer plasma did not work, Sony service was unhelpful and claimed that their VGA pin assignment was proprietary.. and said that they knew their VGA output did not work but had no suggestions except to wait for the new unit due out in Spring 2002... yikes!

Changeable output mode via remote
Signal meter for terrestrial broadcast signals
Great 1080I picture

Super loud fan
Super slow channel surfing

I have had 3 of these units and have ended up returning them all. The first one had intermittent static type pops in the audio when listening to pro-logic sound through the digital optical output. The second unit had a picture freezing problem when viewing the favorite channel menu, and the third unit had the static type poping problem again. All three units had an extremely loud fan that could be heard over the program at low volume. There are four favorite channel menus with a maximum of 8 channels each, not nearly enough IMO. The unit does have a data port for a direct connection with a TIVO unit but if you don't manually switch the units output to UHF/VHF/480i it won't send TIVO any signal through the S-Video output. The output is changable via the remote control though. The things I liked about the unit were that it didn't use the Advanced Program Guide that merges all you program sources into one continuous guide. In my situation the terestial channels are not always available so I didn't have to channel surf through these because they weren't mixed in whith my DTV channels. I also liked the signal meter for terrestrial signals which is lacking in my Panasonic HDTV receiver. The picture quality was excellent and it worked well with my Sony xbr38" HDTV ready set. If It weren't for the fan noise, really slow channel surfing and the audio problems I would still be using the unit.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic TU-HDS20