Converted

No, not the way you think: converted to digital television. My paid for with money sucked from my hard-earned paycheck government coupons expire today; I finally made the trip to Circuit City last night.

PSA: A co-worker’s husband works for the FCC, currently on assignment in Hawaii traveling to talk at nursing homes and retail outlets about the big switch (Hawaii is switching a month earlier, not wanting to disturb a rare bird’s nesting habits). The PSA: the Zenith converter available at Circuit City and the Insignia at Best Buy work the best. They are virtually identical units, both manufactured by LG. Cost for each is $59.99, so $19.99 out of your own pocket.

Installation

The converter is being used on a 13” television/vcr combo with rabbit ears and front A/V inputs. A DVD player was already hooked up through those inputs.

The converter unit itself is small – 8 x 6 x 2” or so. Several types of cables are provided for various hook-up options. I ran the antenna cable to the back of the converter, the RF cable from the converter to the antenna input on the television, turned the tv to channel 3, plugged in the converter and turned it on (remote included). It took less than a minute for the box to automatically find and set the stations. Truthfully, the most difficult part of the process was neatly arranging the myriad cords sprouting from the equipment.

The verdict

This set now gets a much better picture than the set in the living room – which is hooked up to cable. As an added bonus, I picked up several digital music channels, for jazz, classical, worship music and more. The DVD hookup is undisturbed (I watch movies in here while sewing). All in all, I’m pretty happy.