Alpine TV Tuner

[jluv 10+ year member]

I am probably going to purchase the Alpine TUE-T151 today. Anyone here have one? How do you like it? My car stereo guy has told me not to expect great reception. Does it work at all while travelling down the road? Is it where you have to park facing a certain direction to get good reception. Is it ever "great" reception?

I guess if no one replies, I can post up my own review after I install and use it for a bit.

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[AVSTANG02]

what do u expect to get?

Your area have a lot of locally transmitted channels?

how much are you paying for this?

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

what do u expect to get?
Your area have a lot of locally transmitted channels?

how much are you paying for this?

Expect to get? What do you mean? I'm just seeing if anyone here has used one and can post up their experience with it.

I'm in DFW, so there are plenty of local channels. Back in the days before dish or even cable, we still had to tweak the rabbit ears for different stations. But I know this tuner comes with a pretty unique antenna setup. I'm wondering how good (or bad) it works while driving down the road.

The shop was out of them last week, so I'm picking it up tomorrow. Paid $150.

I'll post up a short review once I play with it for a week or two.

 

[Supergumby5000 5,000+ posts]

yeah please post a review, i was kinda pondering this idea

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

Not too tough to install. I had to access the back of the head unit (W200) to hook up to the remote out wire. Then tapped into switched power and ground. The signal travels via RCA (cables not supplied) to the aux input of the head unit. I wish it was Ai-Net, but no big deal. It's just that I'll need to get a video switcher now if I decide to reinstall a Playstation or other game console. The antennae are pretty big and obvious. They were too large to put on my rear windows, so I did the best I could on the front windshield. I'm convinced this works best anyway due to the dark tint I have on the rest of the glass in my truck. I stuffed the base of each antenna into the headliner and ran the actual stems neatly along the edges of the glass. Reception isn't great by any means. It's pretty much what you would expect if you took a TV and some cheap rabbit ears and toyed with them to get a signal, and then changed the channel. You can't adjust these to fine tune them for each individual station, so it's never "perfect". And while driving, the signal gets better or worse as you move and make turns. The higher channels work much better than the lower channels.

It's pretty much just what I expected, but part of me hoped for it to somehow be better. No dice. lol

It's neat to have, since I'm basically just loading up on all of the add-on gadgets you can put on a W200. It works well enough to at least listen to the audio for the news as I head to work. Same for important sporting events if I have to be on the road. And I suppose if I really wanted good picture from it, I could cruise around an empty parking lot until it looks good.

If it was expensive (it's not), or if you really want a great TV picture, I wouldn't recommend it. If someone knows of an external antenna that will make a huge difference, I'm all (rabbit) ears. Ha! Antenna humor.... sorry.

 

[Bolognablake 10+ year member]

Nice review.

I think I want one, just for kicks and giggles.

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

Nice review.
I think I want one, just for kicks and giggles.

Ya, that was my motivation, and it suits the purpose. It was *almost* too much trouble to make it worth it, since the payoff at the end isn't great.

One more thing, I don't think there is a way to delete/program channels, or even set presets. I admit that I haven't reviewed the manual closely beyond installation instructions. But based on playing around with it via the W200, it seems like it just scans all of the channels and saves any that come in. You then have the choice to scroll through every single channel, or just the ones that had signal. I would love to delete all of the Mexican stations, shopping stations, and televangelist stations. Better yet, a ten-key touch pad similar to the Sirius controls would be nice. Even if it had a number pad on the remote, that would rock.

 

[srmfball 10+ year member]

could you video tape it playing for me?

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

could you video tape it playing for me?

No, sorry. Too much trouble. I'm not good enough with computers to get it on here, and I would have to borrow a video camera.

I've found that for most channels I can get a "perfect" picture when facing a certain direction. But as I drive around, it can get pretty bad. The audio is the same way.

 

[mcglothi]

Just curious, what kind of truck do you have? I'm also in the DFW area and I'm thinking about adding this tuner to a W200 in my new F150.

I was thinking about the comments you made on the reception. Would it be possible to install one antenna in the front and one in the rear? That should (almost) double the chance that you'd get good reception on any given channel.

I also found this, for $15 it might be worth a shot...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mobile-TV-Antenna-car-flat-coaxial-roof-mount_W0QQitemZ120091818380QQihZ002QQcategoryZ14932QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[skmfkr 5,000+ posts]

does it pick up hd ?

 

[mcglothi]

does it pick up hd ?

Unfortunately no, its only analog. I did some more research on this today and another thing to consider is that this unit will only work until 2/17/2009 when all TV stations must cease broadcasting analog TV over the air. See the section labeled Analog TV broadcast switch-off here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_tuner

I imagine many TV stations will stop broadcasting in the days leading up to that date, not sure how many will drop off sooner than later though.

Hopefully Alpine will have an ATSC tuner out before that. If they produce a tuner at all after March 1st of this year it will have to be ATSC, otherwise the FCC will not grant it license to operate in the US, but I doubt you'll be able to find one for $150, at least, not for awhile :-/

 

[jluv 10+ year member]

Just curious, what kind of truck do you have? I'm also in the DFW area and I'm thinking about adding this tuner to a W200 in my new F150.
I was thinking about the comments you made on the reception. Would it be possible to install one antenna in the front and one in the rear? That should (almost) double the chance that you'd get good reception on any given channel.

I also found this, for $15 it might be worth a shot...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mobile-TV-Antenna-car-flat-coaxial-roof-mount_W0QQitemZ120091818380QQihZ002QQcategoryZ14932QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Mine is in a 2004 Explorer. Alpine's instructions advise to use the antennas in the same area. I don't know if changing it up would help or not. Installing anywhere besides the front windshield was not an option for me due to limo tint and rear defrost, both of which can adversely affect the reception, according to Alpine. The headliner antenna you posted is out, because the TV tuner doesn't have a coax connection. It's not RCA either, so a simple adapter wouldn't do the trick. I also have multiple layers of Dynamat Xtreme in my truck, including the roof.

The antenna would probably pull in HD local channels, but the tuner is not equipped, and I don't know of any in-dash monitors that are HD anyway.

Since installing the TV tuner, I haven't used it at all. I rarely watch local stations except for news in the mornings, and it doesn't work well enough while I am driving to do that. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

 

[AVSTANG02]

I used to sell a lot of terk signal amplifiers...

maybe hook one up to an inverter and see if it helps?