Digital TV question? + more!

[joed]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

Will the digital converter box you get with the coupons the same type that would be necessary to run with a cable? Comcast tells me that any analogue TV's will need a converter come February.

You need to confirm with Comcast. Normally cable is QAM and over the air(OTA) is ATSC. I don't beleive there is OTA QAM.

 

[jonesg]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

we just bought a new tv, not all new tvs are digital ready. most are HD ready, but not digital. we bought a 19" emerson, HD and with a digital tuner, with DVD built in. they had the same tv, without digital, was $80 less.

this is what we bought. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9107636

same tv, without the DVD. http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9107634

Tash.
I was considering buying a digital box for our TV and my DVD doesn't work , looks like this will work out great.
I think I ought to just let you do my shopping. You do seem to find the deals.

 

[tau1777]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

well if you buy a new TV i suppose it will already have one of those digital recievers. but if you got one of those older TVs you're gonna need to buy a digital converter box. i bought one, and its pretty easy to use. but they are kinda expensive. it cost me $60.

 

[jlinder]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

You are right that cable companies will still carry analog channels. But there is confusion about this.

One of the tricks the cable companies are doing is to tell you that you need to get (read pay them more money) one of their digital boxes to take full advantage of digital quality. Then they remind you of the upcoming switch to DTV.

They will tie them together saying everything to imply that if you don't get their box you are out of luck come February.

For example my uncle got one of their mailings and was so confused after calling them he asked me to check (I already knew the answer but called anyway).

For 15 minutes I kept asking the service rep if he "needed" to get a box.
For 15 minutes I kept asking "Do you have any plans for now or in the future to discontinue analog service on the cable"
For 15 minutes she kept repeating how all air broadcast was going DTV and digital was needed for the best quality.
After 15 minutes she finally admitted they did not.

I knew the answer already and it took 15 minutes for me to get them to give a straight answer. No wonder the average person is confused.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

I knew the answer already and it took 15 minutes for me to get them to give a straight answer. No wonder the average person is confused.

That is interesting info. Is this supposed to be true for all cable companies? I thought they wanted to get away from analogue to free up their optical cable lines?

Who is your carrier?

 

[jlinder]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

That is interesting info. Is this supposed to be true for all cable companies? I thought they wanted to get away from analogue to free up their optical cable lines?

Who is your carrier?

As far as I know it is true for all cable companies, at least for now. One of the selling points the cable companies is that come February your older TVs will still work if you have cable.

But they have eliminating analog in their sight for the future. Digital allows them to put more on the cable and that is money.

What you will start seeing is the number of channels available on analog start to reduce making digital more attractive. We just lost the History channel unless you have digital.

There will come a time when cable analog will go away but that will happen when the cable companies think it works in a business sense.

One thing to kep in mind is that the FCC requires that as long as the cable company has one analog channel it must carry all the local channels in analog.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

I wonder if you run the cable signal thru a digital tuner on a VCR/DVD combo if your analogue CRT TV will get all the channels?

 

[jlinder]

Re: Digital TV question? + more!

I wonder if you run the cable signal thru a digital tuner on a VCR/DVD combo if your analogue CRT TV will get all the channels?

I think you have some confusion here. You are confusling video and the RF (radio frequency) signal the comes down the cable line and off air broadcasters.

To carry a lot of video down the cable the video signal must be put on a carrier wave and that wave is modulated. In the analog world multiple carrier waves are combined to deliver multiple television channels.

That is different from the base band video. Your DVD or whatever selects one of the carrier waves and decodes it. You now have a single video.

What you would feed your older set is the video/audio.

The following is just some additional information in case you are interested:

Video can be analog or digital. The analog video, known in the US as NTSC (useless info here - stands for National Television Standard Committee) is analog video. Digital video is often referred to as 601 which is the ITU standard that defines it.

Analog broadcast or cable is done using the analog signals that are modulated by amplitude modulation (video) and frequency modulation (audio) and fits into a 6MHz channel.

The new DTV takes digital vdeo and modulates it with digital modulation. For example it can use Quadture Amplitude Modulation or QAM. You may have heard of QAM tuners.

Hope that helps.