Rating: 
Summary: Easy set up, reliable, good value
Review: Positives:I'm replacing a RCA DirectTV receiver and samsung's UI is much better and much FASTER. Set up was a snap. It even worked off my old non-HD dish until the installer arrived to install its dish. It found all my local OTA stations on the first try. Having the OTA stations mixed in with the satelite channels is nice. (I had assumed that OTA would be some separate, hard to get to, guide). The DVI connection is amazing! I've suddenly become critical of my progressive scan DVD player. Another excellent feature is that the DVI and S-Video are live at the same time. This works nice for recording through S-Video while watching DVI. Using it with a Hitachi 51" G500 set. Not so positive:
Actually, the only thing that bugs me about the unit are the stupid games that come built in. What a waste of engineering. Let see, I've bought an HD monitor, I'm a satelite customer, I have a home theater system--that's right samsung I'm going to cheap out on a gaming system if I want to play games--please give me some crappy games. An actual problem I had was that my older PVR doesn't have a code to control the 160. Replay wasn't much help and it's really a limitation of the PVR. I mention it only as a unforeseen gotcha you might have. Finally, I've seen a lot of remote complaints, which I too experienced with the samsung remote. It's might be the weakest IR signal ever. My advice, get a good universal remote to replace the samsung. I personally have been using a Home Theater Master MX500 for some time and once I programed it to the samsung the problem disappeared, I can even close the door over the IR sensor. The MX500 actually has 2 IR beams just in case your aim sucks. Go to www.remotecentral.com to get reviews. The MX500 is to remotes what HDTV is to TV. It will solve the samsung's remote problem and any other remote problem you might have.
Rating: 
Summary: this product sucks
Review: This product sucks. I repeat this product sucks! I have owned this receiver for a year now and have had to replace it three times. The receiver inexplicably stopped working on several occasions. Samsung support suggested I unplug the receiver temporarily to restore the settings and receive a picture. This worked occasionally until it finally stopped working all together. I could only receive an audio signal no picture on cable, air or satellite. A second receiver was sent at no cost to replace the "defective" receiver. After hooking up the "new" receiver it inexplicably no longer received air channels in addition to cable. Samsungs only response was the antenna for local HDTV was the problem. We paid to have professional take a look and instantly he told us we had been sent a refurbished replacement and that it was defective. We no longer could switch between the antenna, cable and satellite I had to choose one of the three but they would not work together. Three weeks after receiving the refurbished product it no longer works. Again I can only receive audio. This product is an absolute piece of junk. I am now awaiting the arrival of my third replacement receiver from Samsung. The professional I hired told us this product is no good he has seen the same problem many times. SAVE YOUR MONEY
Rating:
Summary: this product sucks
Review: This product sucks. I repeat this product sucks! I have owned this receiver for a year now and have had to replace it three times. The receiver inexplicably stopped working on several occasions. Samsung support suggested I unplug the receiver temporarily to restore the settings and receive a picture. This worked occasionally until it finally stopped working all together. I could only receive an audio signal no picture on cable, air or satellite. A second receiver was sent at no cost to replace the "defective" receiver. After hooking up the "new" receiver it inexplicably no longer received air channels in addition to cable. Samsungs only response was the antenna for local HDTV was the problem. We paid to have professional take a look and instantly he told us we had been sent a refurbished replacement and that it was defective. We no longer could switch between the antenna, cable and satellite I had to choose one of the three but they would not work together. Three weeks after receiving the refurbished product it no longer works. Again I can only receive audio. This product is an absolute piece of junk. I am now awaiting the arrival of my third replacement receiver from Samsung. The professional I hired told us this product is no good he has seen the same problem many times. SAVE YOUR MONEY
Rating: 
Summary: samsung sirts160 receiver
Review: this receiver brings the picture in much clearer. It is easy to install. Has been recommended to me by others.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent HD Receiver
Review: This receiver exceeded all my expectations. The integrated guide (with OTA channels and DirecTV) is outstanding, and responsive. I have 4 digital/HD OTA channels and the DirecTV HD package. Also, I have this device connected to a Hitachi 57UWX20B using the DVI cable, and the HD picture is unbelievable! I am using this out on a patio / porch, with no air conditioning (in the heat of FL), so I can promise there are no issues with heat causing lock ups (something I had heard about this unit on different forums). This device shipped with the .10 firmware, so this probably resolved all the issues for earlier users. Only prob I had with my setup was the stretch modes, or the lack thereof. Using DVI, my TV only allows me to use the 16x9 modes, so I can't adjust modes on my TV. On the 160, I can switch between different modes, but they don't seem to overide the 16x9 mode of the TV, meaning the 4x3 images are shown as 16x9, and a little "squashed". That being said, I found a workaround. Option 1 is to change the 160 installation settings to 4x3 instead of 16x9, but that was not good enough for me. My preferred workaround is to hook up the s-video out to another input on my TV, and switch between input 1 (DVI) and input 3 (s-video) when I want to watch 4x3 material, and utilize my TV's stretch modes. The fact that the 160 allows for multiple connections to be active makes this workaround possible. All in all, the picture quality and features of this receiver are excellent, and the box is very stable. One other important feature of this TV, if you're using the DVI hookups, is that it has a monitor installation setup that allows you to shift the picture left or right, which is cool, as some Hitachi owners report that the DVI connector seems to shift the picture over to one side a little bit. It was a good buy, and I'm glad I bought it.
Rating:
Summary: Junk with a Capital J
Review: What a piece of junk this receiver is! The picture quality on non-HD programming is mediocre at best although the HD picture is amazing. The problem is that only a handful of shows are in HD on DirecTV. The first problem I had was when the analog receiver went out so I could no longer watch cable or traditional over the air broadcasts. The receiver soon began to shut itself off for no reason. After it would shut itself off, it would need to be fully reprogrammed. Now it has frozen on and you cannot shut it off, change channels or work the receiver with the remote or directly on the box. The manufacturer told me to unplug it and plug it back in after 15 minutes. Still frozen. If I had not had it for 5 months already, I would have tried to return it and get a Sony.
Rating:
Summary: Junk with a Capital J
Review: What a piece of junk this receiver is! The picture quality on non-HD programming is mediocre at best although the HD picture is amazing. The problem is that only a handful of shows are in HD on DirecTV. The first problem I had was when the analog receiver went out so I could no longer watch cable or traditional over the air broadcasts. The receiver soon began to shut itself off for no reason. After it would shut itself off, it would need to be fully reprogrammed. Now it has frozen on and you cannot shut it off, change channels or work the receiver with the remote or directly on the box. The manufacturer told me to unplug it and plug it back in after 15 minutes. Still frozen. If I had not had it for 5 months already, I would have tried to return it and get a Sony.
Rating:
Summary: So much more than I expected from DirecTV.
Review: When I upgraded my DirecTV account from standard to HD, I bought their $399 upgrade package, which included the triple LNB dish, the installation & a new HD-capable receiver. I was unable to find out beforehand what kind of receiver I would be getting, but when the TS160 was FedEx'ed to my home (with Saturday delivery, no less!), I was pretty darned pleased. Installation was quick and neat and that same evening I began on the far left side of the learning curve by actually reading the manual first (a trick I had recently learned from having misused my Samsung 931 DVD player for a solid month).
The features of this machine are nothing short of Swiss Army Knife diversity. Audio and video outputs are, in a word, complete. In my own setup, I use the DVI output at 1080i and the optical audio out.
The guide is just plain impressive. Nevermind its high-tech appearance (there's this little spindle over the guide that just hovers over the current time, slowly making its way to the right as time passes; I don't know why it fascinates me, but it does), it is flat-out faster than anything you have ever seen in a guide and offers more search parameters than you've ever imagined.
Setup fairly neatly scanned all available channels, both those received via satellite and those received over the air, and indexed them accordingly. Granted, some things it grabbed as channels were junk and needed to be removed from the memory, but this was a snap to do.
Despite that little annoyance, what I see as the best feature is the awesome OTA tuning. I have a so-called 160 mile, chimney-mounted antennna on a 20' pole with directional tuning (this has a lot to do with the Saints) that until the TS160 arrived was attached to a Motorola HD receiver from VOOM. I got 3 to 4 local channels OTA on the Motorola, and these were iffy. Simply unscrewing the antenna input from the Motorola and attaching it to the Samsung yielded 27 crystal clear "local" channels, some from as far as 100 miles away!
Needless to say, I am really happy with my Samsung TS160, and I can even be heard speaking fondly of DirecTV these days. When new technology performs the way it's supposed to, life just seems grand.
Rating:
Summary: So much more than I expected from DirecTV.
Review: When I upgraded my DirecTV account from standard to HD, I bought their $399 upgrade package, which included the triple LNB dish, the installation & a new HD-capable receiver. I was unable to find out beforehand what kind of receiver I would be getting, but when the TS160 was FedEx'ed to my home (with Saturday delivery, no less!), I was pretty darned pleased. Installation was quick and neat and that same evening I began on the far left side of the learning curve by actually reading the manual first (a trick I had recently learned from having misused my Samsung 931 DVD player for a solid month).
The features of this machine are nothing short of Swiss Army Knife diversity. Audio and video outputs are, in a word, complete. In my own setup, I use the DVI output at 1080i and the optical audio out.
The guide is just plain impressive. Nevermind its high-tech appearance (there's this little spindle over the guide that just hovers over the current time, slowly making its way to the right as time passes; I don't know why it fascinates me, but it does), it is flat-out faster than anything you have ever seen in a guide and offers more search parameters than you've ever imagined.
Setup fairly neatly scanned all available channels, both those received via satellite and those received over the air, and indexed them accordingly. Granted, some things it grabbed as channels were junk and needed to be removed from the memory, but this was a snap to do.
Despite that little annoyance, what I see as the best feature is the awesome OTA tuning. I have a so-called 160 mile, chimney-mounted antennna on a 20' pole with directional tuning (this has a lot to do with the Saints) that until the TS160 arrived was attached to a Motorola HD receiver from VOOM. I got 3 to 4 local channels OTA on the Motorola, and these were iffy. Simply unscrewing the antenna input from the Motorola and attaching it to the Samsung yielded 27 crystal clear "local" channels, some from as far as 100 miles away!
Needless to say, I am really happy with my Samsung TS160, and I can even be heard speaking fondly of DirecTV these days. When new technology performs the way it's supposed to, life just seems grand.
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