HR10 vs HR20 OTA tuner quality

RS4 said:

...Both dvr's were considered to offer a lowest quality feature (compared to other devices such as HD tv manufacturers who include the feature), but the HR20 is generally considered the better of the two.

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Huh?

Are you really proposing that the tuners in DVRs are "low quality" as a group compared to those used in TVs? I don't think that's the way it works. The difference in reception ability (which for ATSC tuners really comes down to how well they reject out-of-time signals) between tuners is not measured by the quality, it is measured by the technology. Quality is pretty uniform, and even if it were not, that is not what drives tuner reception performance. Improvements in technology drive performance.

All tuners from 1997 forward have fairly equivalent quality, but every 18 months or so the technology makes significant strides. The tuners available when the HR10 was designed were old technology. Those available 4 years later when the HR20 was born were of a much better technology. But both were equivalent in quality for their time, and both probably cost the manufacturer about the same to purchase.

And TVs designed when the HR10 was designed got tuners of the same quality and technology as those in the HR10, just as TVs designed last year got tuners of the same quality and technology of those in the HR20.

That said, it's important to realize that no matter how much tuners might differ in quality or performance, when they are applied in a scenario they are designed for, the PQ is always identical. Not only that, but if you are in a reception environment with low reflectivity, performance is not an issue, as either tuner will do the job and provide the same results.

That leaves one single advantage of a newer tuner, which applies only if you have a difficult reception scenario. A newer, better tuner might make the difference for a tiny few who are on the borderline between solid performance and not-so-solid performance, and it might allow another tiny few to use a set-top antenna instead of investing in a roof or attic-mounted antenna. If you belong to the vast majority who do not fall in that category, the distinction is totally meaningless.