Moving to Digital...or am I???

[sharker]

I know this has been covered elsewhere, but I don't see a full answer to this, as I am brand new to digital tv, so I don't understand some of the discussions.

I currently have 2 pvr-150s and a PVR USB2, an HD200 and a MPV and all are working great! NOw, I get a call from Comcast saying how many digital converters do you want, since they are moving to all digital.

At first I thought, great, I would replae my analog tuners with digital ones and I'd be good to go. So, I started looking for what digital tuners are being used. Then I discovered that people are saying that since Comcast is going all encrypted (except for local channels), so a tuner card won't help. I have no idea what Clear QAM is, how tuner cards are different from a digital TV, or what issues I will encounter with using the box and ir blaster. (I have read the Comcast with Sage thread, but again, I do not know enough about digital tv to apply it to me yet.)

I have no idea on how to keep my current functionality and Comcast. Can anyone help out, i.e. should I get new tuner cards, which seem to work (I'm on XP), do I keep the analog tuners and connect up to the converter boxes and basicall y keep to SD for recordings???

I'm very confused an disappointed, since I use all three tuners now and have a system that works great for me.

Thanks in advance for any help/advice anyone can offer.

[reggie14]

It's my understanding that Comcast is using DTAs (Digital Television Adapters) instead of full-fledged cable boxes. This lets them keep costs down by avoiding the FCC requirement for separable security (i.e., cable card), but in return Comcast can't encrypt the channels the DTAs pick up. I have heard some people claim Comcast is going to start encrypting those channels, but 1) I don't think it's happened anywhere yet, and 2) I'm not sure how Comcast could even technically do it.

Do you have an HDTV yet? If so, then I think you'd certainly want something like the HDHomeRun, regardless of whether or not you're going to pick up anything besides locals. Then you could see what clear QAM channels you're able to pick up before you decide what else, if anything, you'd have to buy.

There's a couple problems with trying to use your existing cards to record TV off the cable boxes. First of all, even if you have Hauppauge IR blasters, you can only use one on a system. So, you'd need to buy something like the USB-UIRT to tune more than one cable box. Second, Comcast is probably going to give you DTAs unless you specifically ask for a "real" cable box (and they're going to charge you more for "real" ones). The problem with the DTAs is that they don't have composite (and certainly not s-video) out. I tried the other day to get my PVR-250 recording off of channel 3 and it doesn't look like you can do that in Sage for some reason.

[sic0048]

QAM is the name of the digital broadcast used by cable companies - just like NTSC is name of the analog OTA and ATSC is the name of the digital OTA broadcasts.

Most cable companies encrypt their QAM broadcasts to prevent anyone with a QAM tuner from viewing their channels that they charge good money for. The only way to view an encrypted QAM channel is to use a cable company supplied digital box, or another digital box/tuner with a cable company supplied cablecard. So it is not like your old analog cable or OTA channels where you can plug the coaxial cable directly into a TV or tuner.

Most cable companies do have a couple of channels that they do not encrypt - hence the "clear QAM" references. That is just referring to the channels that are not encrypted. These are usually limited to just the local networks, but does depend on geographic location. There doesn't seem to be any hard fast rules among cable companies or even with the same company but in different locations. You can always plug in your zip code into the SiliconDust Digital Channel locator. Just select the digital cable option from the drop down menu after putting in your zip code and it will show all the QAM channels that are not being encrypted currently.

A HDHomeRun tuner will allow you to record unencrypted QAM stations, but to get HD quality recordings of encrypted QAM channels, you must use either a Hauppauge HD-PVR or a cablecard tuner which generally must be bought from an OEM manufacturer.

[hufnagel]

Comcast is slowly taking away all the decent channels and moving them into the digital realm. I got my 2 DTAs and 1 receiver in today and am just getting them setup to at least make sure they're ready to go. the receiver has composite out so I can at least use that into one of my -250 boards. now the question is how to deal with the DTAs since as you said they only put out a channel 3 or 4 RF signal. on the one TV I still have an old fashion VCR/DVD/CD player hooked to it and realized, it has composite outs on it as well. wondering if I won't be finding a couple more of them to use as RF to composite converters. will it be a or or idea I don't know but I have to do something since the hauppauge digital cards can't handle the problem.

[gplasky]

Get yourself a HDHomerun and you won't even need the DTA. Comcast is broadcasting mine as ClearQAM. Any digital card getting ClearQAM should get them without the DTA.

Gerry

[hufnagel]

would that include the PVR-1600 cards or any of their other QAM capable boards as well?

[gplasky]

It should. As long as they can get clearQAM you should be able to hook your cable directly to the tuner card and scan for those stations.

Gerry

[hufnagel]

think maybe I should go pick one up locally. especially since I'm down a board after it apparently fried the encoder on it