Digital TV Converter Box

I bought two of these a year ago. I use them to watch TV on computer monitors and old analog TVs. I have an HDTV modulator so I can send my living room signal all over the house, usually from a satellite receiver. I have a 3-TV "man cave" setup for watching basketball, or for watching the news. I can patch one of the Z-JBox receivers into one of the TVs to get a game from a broadcast station. Sometimes the only way to get a WNBA game with Caitlin Clark is to use this receiver with my rotating TV antenna to pick up the signal from a station 100 miles away from us. The Z-JBox is more sensitive than most of the TVs in the house, and is equal to the best TVs in the house. One other thing I like about it is I can manually find a station after it has auto-scanned. That way, I can auto-scan to get most of the stations, then rotate the antenna to a different location, and manually add a new station without erasing all the other stations. These receivers are easy to use, have a good picture, and you can even record programs on a thumb drive and play the files back on a PC. My dog chewed up one of the remotes when we were gone too long. It was OK because I had the other remote, and I was able to save the IR codes into my universal remote in the living room. Then, a week ago, we had a horrible thunderstorm. Lots of lightning and thunder. The power went down for 3 hours and came back on for short glitches 3 different times. One of the Z-JBoxes quit working. I'm not sure if it was the lightning or the power surges. Nothing else was damaged, including the video monitor it was plugged into. They are so inexpensive, so I ordered a third one, and it came from Amazon in less than 24 hours. Now I have two remotes and two working Z-JBoxes again!

Works well for my needs. Connected to Computer monitor via HDMI cable and to TV with no digital tuner via coaxial cable. Tunes in great via antenna. I am only 11-miles from TV towers so good reception for where I am located. When DISH satellite service goes out, usually when it rains hard and windy, this allows us to watch Over the Air Digital Signal Free TV no problem. When I can no longer afford DISH $153 per month, URRRRGH!! I'll have free TV in all rooms! \o/

So I thought for the price of this I would give it a try. I have been wanting the ability to DVR shows that I like for some time - notably Jeopardy - when conflicts keep me from watching them This little box works for that and works fairly well. That said - here are some negatives... The remote is not intuitive - button layout is terrible. The remote overlaps functions with our Roku remote so certain buttons - notably the Up Arrow can't be used because they also cause something to change on the TV set. The buttons on the remote are tiny and close together - I have large hands so it is difficult to hit the correct button sometimes. The box itself is very light weight and the heavy duty cables between the antenna and it and it and the set totally overwhelm it. It is hard to position on a shelf or mantle. The picture quality of a recording is not the best - it isn't terrible but it isn't digital quality. When the box is on (and recording) it does not pass the antenna signal through to the TV via the antenna cable very well. It provides a great picture through the HDMI cable, but limits the quality of the signal to the antenna port on the TV. When the box is off the antenna signal to the TV is unaffected.

These were all the rage in the 00's when broadcast was moving to digital, but now there's a whole new reason to pick one of these up. If you have a dual-monitor setup for your computer or, if your main monitor has a picture-in-picture feature like my Ben-Q graphics display, you can have broadcast TV running while you're working if you have a spare HDMI input. The setup on the ZJBOX was very easy. I connected it to a local antenna (I'm using an inexpensive, compact one I picked up here). If your display has built-in speakers, audio will play over HDMI or use the stereo outputs to connect them to another audio device. (Note that you may have to change the audio setting from PCM to Raw to get good sound) The reception, in terms of the number of local channels it can find and receive clearly, is far better than an older, 7" TV I'd been using before I tried this. The setup is pretty easy, though it took a bit to figure out the audio clarity situation, and the onboard software is nicely designed and quite sophisticated. It even picks up the time from the broadcast signal. The picture is absolutely beautiful. If you are just moving from cable to local broadcast, you'll be amazed to see what uncompressed, broadcast HD *really* looks like. This is a great and useful buy even if you just want to sometimes just watch the news or a sports event while you're working!

Sa l air de bien scanner il a un bouton sur la manette et le menu est assez complet si sa marche je c'est pas car j ai scanner 3-4 canal une fois et un seul une autre fois et je c'est pas si c'est l antenne le problème ou le boîtier ...la logique sa serais là porter Del antenne ...

It is doing the job I wanted it to do, which was allowing the new digital channels to work on my older TV.

The converter box works great and produces a great quality picture on my TV. I used the HDMI output, so I can’t comment on the other configuration options. The box works well, but the PVR function with the added USB drive is a little convoluted to use. Also, I don’t believe you can schedule recordings, just record at the time you are watching. I connected a low cost passive antenna and had 5 free local channels in no time.

The product requires an antenna, no channels work without one. I felt they should have said that then i wouldn't have ordered it. It sits on my table because I 'm not buying an add on.

bought this to replace similar unit. works well but not easy to program (lots of error messages). unit does not allow manual clock setting and is now on the wrong time zone. it works but is not easy or enjoyable to use.