Insignia NS-DXA1 Digital-To-Analog Converter Box

Review by WTFDA member Steve Rich

This evening I found the Insignia NS-DXA1 in stock at the Best Buy in Kokomo, IN. I bought one out of curiosity to compare it next to the Magnavox TB100MW9, purchased last week at Wal-Mart (Avon, IN).

 
Reception-wise, the two seem to be very similar. The Insignia allows you to watch and use the signal meter PRIOR to the station decoding, which is not possible with the Magnavox.

 
It appears the Insignia was designed by LG, because the menu/signal meter/etc. are almost identical to my older LG LST-3100A. The Insignia allows you, through the MENU button, to bring up the signal meter and then scroll through the true RF channel numbers, one after another.

Some of the additional controls via the remote: TV POWER; SAP; VOL +/-; CH up/down; FAV; MUTE.

Some of the MENU features: TV Aspect Ratio (Set By Program, Letter Box, Cropped, Squeezed); Auto Off (Off, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours); Audio Output (Stereo, Mono)

OSD pics posted below:

1) DISPLAY button

2) SIGNAL button

3) MENU button > then OPTION

4) MENU button > then SETUP > then MANUAL TUNING

Just after 9 am ET, I tested the Insignia next to the RCA ATSC11 using WLWT-DT-35 (5.1), Cincinnati, OH @ just over 100 miles. The station was just barely decoding from time to time for a few seconds. The Insignia always decoded ahead of the RCA. Sometimes the Insignia decoded a full video screen while nothing decoded via the RCA.

One thing I've now noticed with the Insignia is that after it decodes the station for the first time (going from true RF channel 35 and then remapping to 5.1 for WLWT-DT), it does not store the call letters. With the initial decode, the OSD indicates the calls, but then when the signal fades out, and then when the signal comes back later to decode again, it simply indicates 5.1only, with no call letters. I've found that there has to be video decoding and then when you press the DISPLAY button, it will display the remapped channel number along with the call letters. I've attached some screen shots of this below.

The other thing I've noticed relating to the display of call letters, when you go into MENU and bring up the signal meter so you can scroll through the RF channel numbers one by one, it does display the call letters after a station is decoded, but the readout is soooooooo faint you can barely read it. Example of this below with pic (look above the signal meter graph, just above "good"). I believe this is all related to the Channel Editing feature, but haven't had time to investigate that yet.

You can read these posts and see screenshots of the Insignia STB at the WTFDA Forums. Go here .