Digital Converter Box

I bought the DigitalStream converter box from Radio Shack. I have a rabbit ear antenna with a coax connecter, which I connected to the converter box. From the box I connected via coax to my DVD/VHS player, then out of the player to my 19GT270 TV. When I turned the TV on my two strongest channels, ABC and CBS were nothing but snow and no audio. The upper channels, 18 (Frog), 24 (PBS), 35 (Fox) and a couple of other UHF channels were there but faint. I tried bypassing the DVD player but got the same results. The converter box has its own remote and 14 pages of instructions, none of which I can comprehend (and I've been hooking up this kind of stuff all my life). The people at Radio Shack have no answers. From all the information put out there about this box, I believed it to be a simple hook-up-and-play process. Not so, not for me, anyway. Any thoughts?