Currently in Los Angeles, where this review took place, nine channels are broadcasting digital television with KCBS as the clear leader. Much of the cost for broadcasting the HD material on KCBS is being subsidized by Samsung and Mitsubishi. Clearly the two companies believe this investment will benefit them long term in HD television sales. Unfortunately, HDTV programming is quite limited at this time making it difficult for consumers to justify the cost of the televisions. Non-primetime hours usually results in standard-definition programming and not high-definition. Some channels have yet to broadcast any high-definition material even though they have gone digital.

Features:
This RCA HD/Digital Receiver is capable of receiving all terrestrial broadcast and DirecTV satellite signals currently available. Two standard antenna inputs are provided on this unit as well as the satellite input from the LNB on the DirecTV dish. Having two antenna inputs allows one input to be used for cable television while the other input can be connected to an outdoor antenna for local reception of analog and digital programming (where available). An additional F-connector for passing the RF video out to the television is provided for those who need it, but has no real use for most users.

The VGA-style (RGB/HV) connector on the back outputs all signals in the 1080I format. In addition to this true high-definition connector, an s-video and two sets of composite video along with two-channel audio are provided. Digital audio is sent out of the DTC100 using a toslink connector. No coaxial digital output is provided on this unit. Keep in mind that this digital output only works with digital broadcasts (DirecTV and digital terrestrial). Analog broadcasts must make use of the analog audio outputs on the DTC100.

RCA features the Master Touch® Glo-In-The-Dark Remote (CRK76CA2) for controlling not only the DTC100, but also other components in your system. Navigating on the DTC100 is simple. Once your television type is programmed into the remote, channel changing on the DTC100 as well as volume control adjustments on your television or home theater preamp/receiver can be made from this one device. Up to four user configurations can be defined for each person's favorite channels.

The on-screen menu guides make it easy to select the program of interest. In addition, with the latest firmware change for the DTC100, the user has the ability to adjust various parameters for their display. We live in an amazing time when firmware upgrades can be performed on our hardware without having to physically do anything. The box simply receives the data over the satellite and programs the memory chip with the latest changes.

The new elliptical shaped satellite dish is required for receiving both high-definition and standard DirecTV. In addition, two dual LNBs are needed to mix the signals from the two available satellites. The four cables from the two LNBs are then sent to a 4x4 switchbox that essentially allows up to four receiver boxes to be connected to the dish assembly. This rather complicated setup is required because any one of the receiver boxes can access either satellite.

Performance:
The VGA-style (RGB/HV) connector on the back outputs all signals in the 1080I format. This raises an interesting question for material that is native 720P or 480I. While I didn't see any objectionable artifacts while watching 720P material being converted to 1080I in the DTC100, I did find that native 480I material being upconverted to 1080I can look pretty poor. Terrestrial analog broadcasts looked much better using the internal line doubler of the PRO-610HD rather than the upconverted 1080I from the DTC100.

With that said, we can now focus on what this box is really used for - high-definition material. The DTC100 produced an incredible high-definition image on our 58-inch Pioneer Elite PRO-610HD display. HBO's channel 509 as well as the DirecTV's high-definition channel 199 looked fantastic. My concern about compression artifacts on DirecTV was only noticeable on the non-high-definition channels. The two high-definition channels were very good. I just hope it stays this way since DirecTV is typically known for trading off quantity over quality. Our local PBS station channel 59-1 periodically transmits a high-definition image that in my opinion looks the best of all. Unfortunately, PBS has been limiting the amount of high-definition programming, and has lately substituted this bandwidth to transmit three standard-definition channels.

Locking in digital terrestrial channels on the DTC100 took a significant amount of time. On average, most of these digital channels took several seconds before acquiring a good signal and displaying a picture.

Summary:
Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sony have announced products with similar features to the RCA DTC100. However, even with these new products, the RCA DTC100 still remains one of the best values in the high-definition set-top box market. RCA has recently dropped the retail price of the DTC100 to $549, making it about half the cost of the competition. We'll have to see if the prices of the new high-definition receivers are worth it once they become available for review. Meanwhile, if you want to have high-definition capability and DirecTV to boot, you can't go wrong with the reasonably priced RCA DTC100.
- Kevin Nakano

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