I have an HDTV and have had to cut off my cable temporarily. Do I need to buy a converter box, or is it capable of receiving the signal on its own?
Your HDTV most likely has an HD tuner if it was made in the last couple of years. I believe that they had to stop selling them without the tuners 3 to 4 years ago at least.
Depends on whether or not there’s a tuner in the television. When did you buy it? I believe 2002 was the cutoff for not having to install tuners in an HDTV. Does it have a coax input on the back that you’d screw rabbit ears onto? If so, you’re probably good. Just plug an antenna onto it, and see what channels you pick up.
if it is called an HDTV then it has a tv tuner in it. if it is called an HDdisplay then it would likely not.
the manual will have the instructions to use the tuner for over the air now instead of the previous cable channels. just a selection choice difference in the setup menu and a couple minutes to find the channels.
you will need an antenna hooked up to your set that is appropriate for what you can get.
Once you have the antenna hooked up, you may not automatically see all/any of the channels. Somewhere in your television menus (accessed by the remote control) will probably be a Channel Scan function. That will scan every channel and enable the ones with a signal, so your up/down channel buttons will show you all the channels afterwards.
Note that you can even use an old style, roof-mounted, ‘spiny’ TV antenna with an HDTV. Also, because over the air HD broadcasts don’t use compression, they actually give you better picture quality than satellite or cable (just much few channels). Be ready for a lot of channel numbers with decimals in them (11.1, 11.2 etc.) most of which are just snow.
with HDTV you will see nose hairs and blades of grass if the station shows a single channel.
antenna is important, old antennas can be just fine.
mostly you either get a picture or not for a channel that your tuner has found.