Digital TV Converter Box, ATSC Tv Tuner - ZJBOX for Analog HDTV Live 1080P with Recording&Playback,HDMI Output, Timer Setting Tuner Function Digital Channel Free

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!

Very surprised at how well this works. Imagine rabbit ears on the roof giving you HD quality picture and sound. I bought the small antennae as well. I bought this ZJBOX digital TV converter to get local programming, and it’s been a solid purchase. Right away, it felt like good value for money considering everything it can do. The picture quality is clear in 1080p, and I’m pulling in a surprisingly good range of over-the-air channels with a basic antenna. Setup was straightforward, and the overall ease of use is WAY better than I expected. The menu system is simple, and the control buttons on both the box and the remote are responsive and clearly labeled. I also like the timer settings for auto shutoff and scheduled recording—it’s very convenient. Recording to a USB drive works well, and while this unit doesn’t rely heavily on wireless connectivity, it does exactly what it’s meant to do without complications. The USB charging capability for powered storage devices is a nice bonus and worked without issues for me. Overall, this converter box does its job reliably, has useful features like recording and playback, and feels well thought out. If you’re looking to get free digital channels without paying for cable, this is a solid option.

Only knocking it one star as it just died on my just shy of only 3 years. That doesn't seem like a long life span for this basic box, but other than that I really liked the product! It worked great, I recorded shows on it during the first year then didn't really use that function much. It had its quirks like after awhile it would lose sync with picture, but easily fixable by unplugging it and plugging it back in. When trying to record, finding the correct time zone was difficult. It would say the correct time zone per the guide to record, but then still be 2 hours off so you figure it out. But it did as advertised so no real complaints! Sad it died!

It works. It makes digital TV play on my analog set, and pulls in "14" channels - but 7 are duplicates, so really only 7. (Here in the boonies 7 is good.) However the picture color is not great, just ok, too much red, and very dark. There are no user adjustments in this converter box like brightness, contrast, nor color. So you must accept the picture the way it is. (My TV has a built in DVD player, and color is perfect playing disks, so my set is not the color problem.) Set up was easy, and at least I can watch broadcast TV again, since my previous converter died.

I am using the ZJBOX Digital TV converter box with my ancient (23 y/o) 50” 1080i NEC plasma screen monitor to pull in OTA channels utilizing a roof mounted VHF/UHF Yagi antenna as my monitor still works like new and is also sometimes still used as a large screen monitor for my laptop (laptop is connected via VGA and the ZJBOX is connected with component to the plasma monitor since the old style HDMI input on the monitor would need an additional dongle to hook up to the converter box which has the newer smaller style HDMI output jack). As a side note, it is absolutely amazing how much technology has advanced and how much prices have come down (my 50” NEC 1080i, not even 1080p, plasma monitor was $12,000 23 years ago with no tuner, and I just bought a 4k 75” microLED smart TV for under $1000 😮!). Audio goes to a 7.1 channel home theater Denon A/V receiver via L/R coax RCA on the converter box. Picture quality (even at 1080i) on the plasma is excellent although some of the settings on the plasma were adjusted (brightness, contrast, gray/white level curves, etc) for the best possible image. Audio output is also very good with the Denon doing the surround processing. Out of the box, the image was clear but somewhat “muted” in impact on the major HD OTA channels grabbed by the converter box. Even though I live in a hilly canyon area, since my outdoor antenna is mounted on a second floor roof, the converter box was actually able to pull in OTA channels just as well as my new large screen smart TVs (about 125 channels!) so the converter box gets 5 stars for its ability to scan and pull in channels, although I only keep about 9-10 of the digital HD channels on my favorites list. Speaking of the “Favorites” list, the UI, although fully functional, is somewhat “clunky” and outdated in appearance. The provided printed manual is not particularly well detailed in how to navigate the converter box, although anyone with just a rudimentary amount of experience with various UI’s can easily figure out the menus with some trial and error exploration. Compared to some of the slightly even lower priced converter boxes available, I liked that this one has a metal housing (there are a number of reviews of other boxes that state that overheating is one suspected mode of failure of those other boxes, many of which are housed in plastic boxes). This one seems to be well made (for a relatively low priced converter box) and comes in a metal case which appears to have reasonable air circulation vents. Because cooling is passive and not active cooling, there is no fan noise which is a plus as due to the IR sensor being located on the front panel with no plug-in provision for a wired extended IR sensor, this converter box will likely be placed within line of sight next to your TV or monitor. To get around this, I placed my converter box into a my enclosed A/V closet for a nice neat, hidden install, and utilize a RF transmitter in the converter box remote control (the rechargeable type that replaces one of the AAA batteries in the remote) so that I do not have to have line of sight for remote control. I use a RF to IR remote control extender made by Next Generation for this. The converter box is quite responsive to the remote control and I like the convenience of not having to point the remote towards the converter box and not having to have a box sitting next to the monitor with exposed cables (good for the WAF 😂). I assume that all the internal electronic tuner/converter chips are pretty much the same between all these low priced Chinese converter boxes as the pictures of the UI on all these low priced boxes are the same so I went with this one specifically due to it having a metal housing (I set up a small DC computer fan next to the unit to prevent any overheating, although I did not notice any excess heat coming off the the box even before setting up the fan. Another reason impacting my choice of this unit over the others was that it also had component outputs in addition tot he HDMI and composite outputs (some of the lesser priced ones had only HDMI and composite outputs). For those of you connecting this to an older analogue TV with an analogue tuner and no composite, HDMI nor component inputs, there is also a coax antenna pass through on the back of the unit. So, overall, I am very pleased with this unit and give it 5 stars, especially considering its very low price. Only time will tell if the unit holds up but in the meantime it has allowed me to continue to use my plasma screen for a very low price as an OTA TV in addition as a large computer monitor (only about a $40 investment to keep a $12,000 screen working 😝)!

very easy to set up with the proper antenna

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!

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.

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.

I scanned 5 times for channels and it kept missing some also it lost all of them when I turned the converter off. I have to say that the company was very good in refunding me, it even let me keep the converter so I didn't had to spend money to send it back.

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.

Nothing wrong, I am using it on an old tv that I use as a second monitor and I use one of the HMi connectors to receive the signal from this box.