We're rearranging our living room and replaced my buddy's 32" LCD with an older 52". He put the 32 back in his room and hooked up our cable. Well after scanning we notice some channels are listed as CADTV 89-2 and they look like they could be in HD. Is this possible? If so what the hell?! It has a cable card slot but I'm not exactly sure what those are for. Is it just to get digital/HD cable without having to use a receiver? Is the HDTV offered using a receiver better quality than if you hooked the coax directly to a television. So confused plz2halp.

/noob

12/16/2007 10:25:23 PM

your buddy's TV has a digital/HD tuner built into it

what he's picking up are digital and HD signals being broadcast over the air (OTA). its the same HD signal for OTA as you'd get with a receiver (as far as quality, i mean) but he won't get ESPNHD and other channels without a receiver.

12/16/2007 10:40:11 PM

^ not quite.. different signals (QAM vs ATSC/OTA).. most cable companies broadcast local channels in the clear (no encryption/scramble, etc.), so when you hook a tv/PC tuner card directly to the cable outlet and the tv/card has a QAM tuner in it, you'll be able to pick up those QAM channels without a box.

directly from the cable line or from the cable box won't make a difference in terms of picture quality. It's the same signal. The box just makes it easier to tune to. 89-2 on the tv may be channel 250 on the box.

Everyone gets the digital feeds to their house if they have standard cable and no filter on the cable line outside. Ordering the digital cable package is basically paying for the rights to the encrypted channels (which is pretty much 90% of the digital channels offered) and getting a box that decrypts them.

The best quality HD signal is getting it OTA using a UHF antenna powerful enough to pick up the signals and filter out the reflections.

[Edited on December 16, 2007 at 10:46 PM. Reason : ]

12/16/2007 10:44:20 PM

we could only get the HD channels when the cable feed is plugged in. ESPN is in HD, but I don't see things like HBO or TBS or HDNet or anything of that nature. 89 channels were found, iirc. Thanks for the input.

Are cable cards worth it? Also my room has the cable modem, but I told them only the other two bedrooms needed cable. Now I want to watch, can I just pick up a splicer and hook the modem up as well as my tv? Will you see a drop in internet speeds or anything using this?

12/17/2007 1:12:30 AM

i have digital cable but no set top box in my bedroom. i get all those 89.25 channels too but like wolfrules said, they don't come through. i do get 5.1 HD, 11.1 HD, etc. though.

^ yes if you split your cable you will probably notice slower speed. if you are going to do it though, split it at the source once with a two way splitter (don't use cheap shit from radio shack). send one to the router, and the other to an additional splitter for your tvs.

when i bought my house i had the cable company come out and run new wire because the previous owner put in crap cable that couldn't handle the bandwidth or (as the timewarner guy told me) the power that they send nowadays. he split it at the box and used some splitter that separated the data frequencies or something like that. i don't know the details but it was only like $40 to have him wire the master bedroom, my office for data, and the living room for digital cable.

12/17/2007 1:59:32 AM

^^You were getting ESPNHD via QAM? On TWC? What channel did this show up on? I just ask because if you did in fact get this, then something has changed, as TWC has only had local stations available unecrypted for a couple of years now.

12/17/2007 2:24:00 AM

sorry should have mentioned it was suddenlink in greenville. I did notice an alert saying ESPNHD would be available to all HD subscribers and no longer only part of the sports tier.

12/17/2007 2:44:46 AM