We have designed the LETU digital TV system to support as many digital TV models as possible. To be fully supported on the LETU system your TV, computer tuner card, or other device must have a tuner with ClearQAM support (ATSC support alone is not enough though is also present on many tuners with ClearQAM functionality). LETU uses ClearQAM to avoid requiring students to rent a digital cable converter box since ClearQAM is built into most (but not all) digital TVs. As a result, we recommend bringing a quality digital TV with a current tuner (see below).
Recommended TVs
In general we have determined that the majority of TVs work very well with our HD system. While we cannot guarantee that any particular TV model from any manufacturer will work flawlessly, we will endeavor to document all known exceptions on this page as well as to pursue with our vendor support any models not listed on the "Non-Recommended" list which have difficulties.
In particular we have had excellent results with TVs from the following manufactures.
- LG
- Samsung
- Vizio
- Most other major brands generally work quite well (including Sony and others).
Non-recommended TVs
Unfortunately, HDTV standards are not yet consistent enough to guarantee that all TVs will work with every digital system. In particular, we have discovered issues with several TV brands and recommend that students avoid purchasing these brands for use at LETU if at all possible.
We have implemented workarounds for some of the audio issues the TVs below have experienced, but as they may still experience difficulties on the LETU TV system we recommend avoiding them if possible:
- Many TVs manufactured before 2008
- Emerson (may experience audio issues)
- Magnavox (may experience audio issues)
- Sylvania (may experience audio issues)
- "Thanksgiving Specials" / Some Store Brands: Some of the cheapest models of "store brands" or the lowest priced models often available during sales such as those after Thanksgiving. These may often remove the required ClearQAM tuner to get the price into "sale" range without making this obvious on external packaging. Where budget is a concern, we recommend avoiding these "bargain basement" TV models where possible in favor of solid value brands like Vizio.
Digital Tuner Support
In cases where TVs are not fully supported there are several digital tuners available that can provide connectivity to LETU's TV system for TVs without proper support. Any tuner with a ClearQAM tuner should work. Examples of tuners known to work are below:
PC Tuner Card Support
PC Tuners' performance on the LETU system depends heavily on the software used to view the programming. In general current generation cards with ClearQAM support should generally tune in our signaling, but the software is responsible for determining which channels can be viewed. As an example, Windows Media Center is very selective about the channels it will show after an auto-scan, but with some effort, it is normally possible to manually program all LETU channels to display.
We have had good results so far from the following tuner cards:
- Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 2255
Please note that this card may still require some technical work with Windows Media Center or your preferred TV viewing software to successfully tune all channels. - HDHomeRun
This tuner does not require a PCI slot but does require you to provide your own network switch (support for switches on the LETU Residential Student Network is available as of Fall 2012) to connect it to your LETU network jack while still allowing a connection for any desktop computer you might have. Please note we do not recommend the HDHomeRun PRIME model which uses CableCard technology which LETU's system does not utilize. The basic HDHomeRun Connect is the model which works the best. As with the Hauppauge card, actual support will depend heavily on the software used to tune the device.
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