[opendtv] Digital Stream 3150 Plus

We went to Circuit City yesterday and bought a brand new, 
still-not-in-their-inventory-system Digital Stream 3150 Plus. No special 
deal, it was the basic $229 price, but I figured if it was anything like the 
Accurian, at least we'd have a good chance it would work well.

Turns out, this Digital Stream is virtually identical to the Accurian, in 
terms of features and performance. The only differences I could see are that 
the component outputs can also be set to RGB (but using the same three RCA 
jacks as YPbPr, not the PC-standard RGB multipin connector). The other 
difference is that, much to my relief, there is a sort of master volume 
control. You press the "select" button while watching TV, and a volume 
control bar appears on the screen, along with a basic signal strength meter 
and station/program description, which the Accurian also displays. The 
volume was set rather low at the factory, which had me a little concerned 
until I discovered this additional control. Aside from that, this is about 
as close to the Accurian as you can be. The menus are identical.

First thing I did was to set it up downstairs, in place of the Accurian. It 
auto-scanned channels and, with the external antennas, found exactly the 
same ones the Accurian had found. Good deal.

Then I took the unit upstairs, to "transition" our upstairs setup to ATSC. 
With the Radio Shack double bowtie, and some experimentation of course, the 
STB found all the local stations, minus the aforementioned WETA (PBS Ch 26) 
and minus the aforementioned UPN 20. But it also managed to receive one 
Baltimore station, CBS 13, which in digital is of course a UHF channel, as 
are all digital channels in this area.

We had marginal reception of NBC 4 at first. I tried the antenna close to 
the window, but that didn't help. Turns out, the original position, which 
worked best for analog, was still the best. I tried touching one of the VHF 
rabbit ears, and that helped a lot. While I was contemplating adding a wire 
to that rabbit ear, I tried instead to simply collapse down the other VHF 
ear. That did the trick. So now, with the antenna in that one location on 
top of the cabinet, all local channels, and CBS 13 from Baltimore, are 
available (minus those mentioned).

I can safely say that the experience of receiving ATSC via rabbit ears was 
very much the same as fussing with rabbit ears for NTSC, in our case. It 
took no longer to find the sweet spot. Walking around does not seem to 
affect reception, now that I solved the NBC 4 reception issue by collapsing 
the one VHF ear. Perhaps an antenna with more gain, like the Silver Sensor, 
would find more Baltimore stations, but then my bet is that it would be more 
touchy about all the local stations.

Bert

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