[navagator]

I’m going to be in the market for an OTA HD Tuner in the near future and would like your recommendations.

It must have a strong tuner, pass 480i through components, provide at least 3 hours of EPG data, and have a good picture.

I currently have a Zenith DTT-900 converter box which does an excellent job pulling in long distance stations. The main station(s) I watch are WHO/AntennaTV in Des Moines, which is approximately 83 miles away. The signal meter on my Zenith bounces from about 65 to 75 percent for these stations and I rarely ever experience any dropouts unless we are experienceing bad weather.

I want an HD box that will perform at the same or close to the same level as my Zenith convert box does for long distance signal reception.

My original idea was to try to find a good used LG LST-3100A/4200A box. They seem to be a very well made box and as far as I can tell meet all my requirements, and I know my Zenith converter box is made by LG so I thought the 3100/4200 would perform similarily. However, after some research I found that the 3100/4200 uses the older 4th generation chipset versus the 6th generation chipset that my Zenith box uses. If I understand correctly the older chipsets don’t do as good of a job pulling in long distance signals, so I don’t know if the 3100/4200 will work for me. I need to be able to receive WHO.

I’m not sure what chipset the Centronics ZAT 502 HD/RTC DTA100 HD/Digiwave DTV5000HD units use, so I'm unsure one of these boxes would perform as well as my Zenith for long distance reception.

The Channelmaster CM7001 seems to be a nice box but if I understand correctly it only shows the program data for the program that is currently showing, basically no EPG.

I also ran across the Firebird DCT210 which I really can’t find a lot of information about.

The Winegard RC-1010 seems to be a decent box, I’m not quite sure what chipset it uses. I’ve read where it could be a 4th or 5th or even a 6th generation.

I welcome any suggestions regarding any of these boxes or perhaps another brand of box that might work for me.

Thanks.