In what would think is a move that could be biting their own tail, satellite television provider Dish Network began selling a digital-to-analog converter. The DTV converter allows older televisions that are not digital to enjoy digital transmissions over-the-air. Some might ask, “Why do I need satellite service then?” If you like having a lot of channels to choose from, you may want both.
The DTVPal (don’t ask me why they chose to use the word “Pal”, are we in the U.K.?) is a small, streamlined sized converter box that sells for $59.99. The converter is eligible for the government issued $40 coupon for DTV conversion. So if you apply the coupon, you can get your old sets looking like brand new digital TVs for $20.
Dish Network doesn’t provide local stations in all areas, so this converter box would allow viewers to pick up their local stations in high quality and have it convert to their non-digital TVs. No more snow, no more interference. If you have a clean connection to a broadcast tower (you’ll probably need some sort of antenna), it will be the best picture on that old TV to date.
Digital does have some artifacts though. If the digital signal isn’t clean enough pixels can drop out here and there. But what the heck? It’s free.
See the Dish DTVPal digital-to-analog converter store.
Learn more about the DTV conversion and converter coupons.
I have one of these. It works much better on dropouts than the magnavox ones sold at WalMart.
Only drawback is that it uses the same remote as your dish network receiver causing problems between the units. Changing remote codes does not help