Home > Consumer Reviews > Motorola High-Definition Off-Air Receiver (HDT101)

I tried HDTV tuners from RCA and Samsung before settling on this Motorola. The Moto is a bit loud but it works perfectly. Both RCA and Samsung had performance issues, and the Samsung was especially bad (lots of blocky images). The Moto decodes into clean and sharp images. I use it with the Gemini HDTV/UHF indoor antenna, and the HDTV is amazing on my Sharp Aquos LCD TV. This will serve me well until I buy a house and get Voom satellite service.

It works well as long as you don't mind the louder-than-a-computer fan that roars from this tiny box. And the interface completely blocks almost half the screen, so as you look to see if something is on...you can't see! About a third of that solid box blocking the screen is used to display the word Motorola. I'm returning it.

Save your money and buy something else. This is our second unit, first one lasted less than a year, second one less than 6 months. Motorolla replaced the first one, but said we were now out of warranty on the second. The unit displays 0000. This happened after I scanned for new channels and saw an odd looking channel with numbers and letters, curiosity got the best of me and I tried clicking on it to tune it in, then the zeros came. Motorolla said this corrupted the software and they only thing that could be done was to replace the unit. We tried unplugging for a few days, holding in on the power button to reset,...but nothing.

The small HDT 101 from Motorola is a HDTV tuner that works entirely
in software and firmware. This software that does the decoding of the
signal is likely to be confused by certain broadcast signals,
lock up, and not recover from the lockup, failing to load the firmware
ever again. Motorola seems to have stopped supporting the design
with software fixes and updates, they have run out of replacement
units at this juncture, and if in warranty may offer you a refund
for your purchase price. A novel idea that did not work out. Avoid.

I bought a used HDT-101 and now wish I hadn't. It worked great for about 6 months and then locked up, it wouldn't do anything. The display said 0000. I called Motorola tech support hoping they could tell me how to do a reset. They admitted this is a known chipset problem and the only option is replacement of the unit. Since I'm not the origional owner they won't do anything for me.

Update: After a lot of talking and writing the departments listed on the Motorola website they have agreeed to take the unit back and refund what I paid for it. This was a surprise to me and actually I wanted them to repair or replace it but this is fine with me. Since I bought it used I am very surprised they would go this route instead of repair/replacement. This unit has been discontinued.