This is something that has been bothering me for a few months now. I bought a new HD TV a few months ago when my old TV died. I only have basic cable, mostly just the networks and a few other channels. However, Comcast has the same channels in HD, except they are way up in the channel numbers, I think in the 200s, so that no TV tuner can pick them up. Comcast will of course, for a fee, rent me a box so that I can watch HD.
I’ve been reading around and found out that many cable companies do this. I’ve also come to find out that even if they don’t they scrable the HD channels so that you still have to rent the box. Is there a reason for this? It’s more of a pain to have to turn on two things, the TV and box, just to watch TV. I know that lots of people love having the guide, but I don’t care.
It can’t be that hard to send out the signal as I have an antenna because I don’t want to pay the extra money. So basicaly they scramble the signal, then unscrable it, sounds like a waste to me, and who wants to steal something they can get for free?
I’ve also got another question. I don’t like paying the high cable costs, so I only get the cheap stuff. However, years ago they made a mistake and gave me the full package. I didn’t want it and wasn’t going to pay for it. They never charged me for it, and I never watched it anyway. However a year or so later they started running commercials saying anyone stealing cable would be prosecuted. Could they have done anything to me? I wasn’t the one that made the mistake, I didn’t tamper with anything, I didn’t buy a descrambler or anything. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t try and put a few thousand dollar fine on me. They didn’t, but could they have?
It sounds like an extra service beyond basic cable, and cable companies have been scrambling & charging access fees for that stuff for quite a while now.
Getting a HD antenna and using it successfully is no picnic. They’re big, expensive, and not guaranteed to get the signal.
The downgrade from HD to normal transmission doesn’t necessarily happen at the cable company’s system. Right now, networks have to send out both an old analog signal and the new, digital signal, which usualy means HD as well. The cable compant sends both, and you’re only getting the normal feed for now. I pay Comcast an extra $5 a month to get HD. It’s a different box, so part of the cost is the receiver that will send your HD TV an HD signal.
It’s not that they are “scrambling” the signal (in fact they are prohibited by federal law from scrambling any signals that are available over the air via antenna).
The problem is that your “non-HD” cable box cannot output enough resolution to your TV set to accomodate the HD signals that are being broadcast. That’s why if you want HD you have to have the HD box from the cable company.
If your TV has a built-in HD tuner, you can hook up your antenna directly to the TV and get the local HDTV channels without cable at all.
The basic answer is that even when the cable companies don’t scramble the digital signal, it’s in a format which not many TVs are designed to receive.
HD broadcast over the air by local stations uses a signal standard called ATSC. Lots of new HD sets have ATSC tuners and can receive their local stations in HD with just an antenna.
But cable doesn’t use ATSC, and ATSC isn’t really designed for coax transmission. They still send the signal digitally, but they use the QAM format for doing so.
What kind of TV do you have? Does it have a place to put a Cablecard? If so, it has a QAM tuner already and you just need a cable card to access those channels. I know that Comcast around here (Boston), will provide you with a Cable Card which allows you to receive the HD versions of the channels you already get & pay for, at no additional charge and without the need for a cable box. So if you have their “basic” package, you can get your local stations, plus discovery, espn, and a few others in HD with the Cablecard.
One reason is that the scheme used for over-the-air digital broadcasting (ATSC) is less efficient than the scheme used for transporting digital television streams over cable systems. ATSC is optimized for over-the-air transmission (impulse noise, multipath, etc.) and the system used by the cable operators (QAM) is optimized for the relatively benign environment of cable distribution systems. If the cable operators used ATSC, the overall data bandwidth of their system would be substantially reduced. You can think of an ATSC channel as a 19 Mbps modem and a QAM channel as a 38 Mbps modem.
Does anyone actually turn their cable box off? I still only turn on one thing because the box is never turned off.
And if you have the right antennae and a tv with an HD Tuner, you dont need the box.
Our cable system recommends that you turn the box off every night. They send out updates to the system then and for some reason they only take if the box is turned off. At least that’s how they explained it to me.
My cable system has never made that recommendation. The digital cable boxes that they use have a power switch, but it doesn’t do much. Even when “off”, the box is receiving and processing program guide updates, subscriber authorization data, etc.
This isn’t true, I have an antenna, any antenna will work as they still use the same frequencies. I only have a UHF antenna right now and is no bigger then a dish. They only slap HD on the box to make more money.
I don’t have any cable box at all, and I know for a fact I can pick up HD channels through just a normal cable because I get some HD channels as is, no box and no extra card.
I guess I should reask the question. Why do cable companies force you to get either a card, which while free only a Comcast tech can install at $80 an hour, or rent a box at $10 a month? I have a HDTV with a tuner in it, I have an antenna that picks up OTA HD no problem. I can get some channels that I’m not supposed to get that are HD, yet all the local channels are so far up the lineup that I can not get them on my TV.
It seems to me that they are making it harder for everyone doing it this way. The only thing I can see is more money, but if enough people get mad, like me, then they’ll lose money.
A $30 antenna such as a ‘double bow tie’ will pick up HD over the air signals very well. You will need either an ATSC HD tuner in your TV or you can buy one for cheap on eBay. You will also want to mount it in your attic or in some location where it get good reception.
Although I now also have HD through my cable provider, back in 2000 that’s how I did it. I still think the picture is better and still prefer to watch my local channels in HD using the antenna.
An ‘HD Ready’ TV without a tuner will not display HD pictures unless you have HD service or the arrangement described above. Although this sounds like a no-brainer, I am continually amazed by people I know who buy an HDTV and think they are watching HD.
As for the cable company box, it has to be an HD box with DTV/HDMI/DVI outputs to the corresponding inputs on the TV. You can’t get HD via coax into your TV even if it is an HD set.
I have an HDTV, not HD ready, and it has the proper tuners in it already. Any of the newer 37"+ TVs have them, as do most of the smaller ones now.
I don’t have a cable box, I don’t know where that info even came from. As for getting HD via coax, I do. I get channels that are supposed to be scrambled and I’m not supposed to get. I can not however get my local channels that I want to get.
I guess I’m not asking this right, or people really want to read into it. So here it is again:
Why does Comcast not send the local channels so that I can pick it up? They force me to either have someone install a cable card, or rent a cable box. It seems a waste to me because there are other people who get HD signals with out going through all the crap.
Are you utterly certain about this? Because this goes against everything I know about HD & cable, and I have worked in this arena in the past. Which HD channels are you getting, and what channel numbers are they? Do they display in true HD resolution?
I’m not questioning your honesty or anything - I’m just really shocked that your TV can pick up any HD content from Comcast without additional equipment.
With 100% I can’t say yes. But unless they transmit the analog with a little HD in the corner then I would say it is. I don’t know the channels because 1. I don’t watch the cable at all since I get what I want from my antenna. I keep my cable to record only. 2. The HD that I was getting was a lot of On Demand stuff, things I wasn’t supposed to get and I had to search for it to begin with. 3. My TV will not allow me to change between 16:9 and 4:3 on most channels, plus everything I saw looked really good.
Here is this thread someone says, just plug the cable line directly into your TV to get HD feed. I’ve read that in other places as well that some cable companies put the feed so that it can be picked up by just the QAM tuner.
I’m also pretty sure I get digital feeds because I pick up the digital music stations on my TV.
Huh. Well in that case, I’d have to guess that they inadvertently did not encrypt the HD channels you did get, and your TV has a built-in QAM tuner. Or they’re intentionally not encrypting the HD channels you get, with the intention of encrypting them in the future after you’re hooked on HD Monday Night Football and HD lions eating gazelles, so you’re more willing to pay for a STB or Cable card.
What kind of TV do you have? Doing a quick websearch, I see that a lot of newer sets have a QAM tuner built in (listed as “Digital Cable Ready”), so it’s quite likely you have one.
There is no such thing as an HD antenna, it’s the same antenna used for NTSC broadcasts. But remember not all TV stations broadcast their digital signal from the same place as they do their NTSC signal. (NTSC is the system used currently in analog). Also remember due to interference and cost, not all digital stations broadcast at the same power as their NTSC analog counter part. Digital is basically all or nothing. Meaning you get the signal clear or nothing. Those who get fringe channel with NTSC, but are full of snow for example won’t get those with digital.
Also remember the FCC doe NOT mandate any High Definition broadcasting, only digtal. One TV channel can do an HD broadcast or as many as six seperate digital channels.
The FCC also mandates for over the air(OTA) broadcasting only ONE of those channels must be scrambled. A lot of people assume this means as technology improves it will be possible to broadcast one digital channel and one HD channel OTA. This means the TV station could, in theory, charge you for HD TV but give you the same program in digital for free.
Many TV stations (the ownership companies) are doing that right now for cable. What they do is provide the cable company with a free analog channel and charge the cable companie for the HD signal. This is perfectly legal with FCC regulations.
The cable companies are passing on this cost. As long as they give you the one channel free it’s fine because it’s the analog version.
One other thing the FCC says that cable companies can’t scramble free OTA channels but it’s not an absolute.
For instance I live in Chicago and Comcast scrambled all my channels (the cable companies I had before Comcast bought them did not). When I complained the FCC replied that it allows the scrambling of channels even free channels if the cable company files notice of high theft of service. Which Comcast did. They don’t have to prove high theft just file it. Ironically in my building which has over 100 apartments the cable box isn’t locked. Anyone can hook it up, you just walk in find your apartment number and plug it in. But all you will get is 100 channels of scrambled mess.
Basically I see a pattern where TV stations will give the cable company a digital signal for free and charge for the HD version which the cable company will pass on to their customers.
I have a Sharp Aquos 37", though I couldn’t find a manufature date on the label. I did however finally find out where the cable card would go even though the booklet says nothing about it. It does have a QAM and HDTV tuners in it.
I can confirm that Comcast doesn’t scramble the QAM channels, at least in my area. For a long time, my MythTV box HD tuner only recognized the “free-to-air” channels with real, fixed Comcast channel numbers. Two weeks ago spurred by another thread here in GQ, I finally purchased a high-definition set with a QAM tuner, too. It took about 1/2 hour to do the autoprogramming, but it turns out that all of the non-premium (i.e., “pay”) channels are available using various subchannels (I’ve got to take another look at my MythTV tuner now). I only have basic, lifeline cable that comes with my internet connection (my “real” TV except locals comes from the DirecTV, also piped into my MythTV box).
I was immediately interested in a map of these subchannels, but such a thing doesn’t exist. According to the threads in the AVS forum, Comcast changes these subchannels frequently, but because their cable box does all of the mapping, you never notice it if you have the box or CableCARD. For example, 76.1 may be FoodTV right now but 82.12 next week, but via the cable box it will always be channel 160 (or whatever it is).
In any case, I currently transcode the HD down to 640x480 mpeg4. Aside from taking a lot less room, the picture is still exceptionally clear compared to the analogue signal. That and the DirectTV signal still appear crystal clear on the big screen, so I’m not getting my panties in a bunch over a true HD signal, although it’s nice to record on the low channels without the low channel cable interference.