First off, I hope this is the proper forum. Here's my question. My mother has charter cable....just a basic 15-20 channel package, no receivers. Still, she is able to get hd through her cable running directly into her hdtvs. She is pleased with the picture qualilty but I think it maybe could be better. If I buy, say, a dvd player with a build in tuner, one with component inputs, would her overall reception/picture quality improve? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Sounds like you're looking for tuner help, but my experience has been that the internal tuners tend to be a bit better than a set top box (STB) tuner.

Also, if you're asking if going from cable to a STB then outputting component to the TV, then that would technically work, but I seriously doubt it would look better, unless the internal tuner is such low quality.

Component -> DVI/HDMI -> internal tuner in terms of quality. At least in this poster's humble opinion.

Mr Zoid

Please keep topic titles specific. See my edit. Thread moved

Is she watching the HD channels that Charter provides via clear QAM, in HD? If so, she's not going to do better with a DVD recorder's tuner, because all DVD recorders that can receive digital channels down-convert them to SD, both for recording and for real-time viewing via the recorder's outputs.

First off, I hope this is the proper forum. Here's my question. My mother has charter cable....just a basic 15-20 channel package, no receivers. Still, she is able to get hd through her cable running directly into her hdtvs. She is pleased with the picture qualilty but I think it maybe could be better. If I buy, say, a dvd player with a build in tuner, one with component inputs, would her overall reception/picture quality improve? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

The QAM tuner in her HDTV will be the best way to get local HD channels, but unless the HDTV has CableCARD capability, she won't get any other HD channels (TNT, ESPN, USA, etc.). She'll need the cable box for those. If the HDTV has CableCARD, that would be the best way to receive those channels.

As noted, there are no HD capable DVD players. Even those with Digital TV tuners downconvert output to standard definition.

The only way to improve PQ is to put up an antenna and get those chs via OTA. What are you/she comparing the current PQ with to think that things could be improved?

Thanks for the responses. She's too far away to receive any ota hd channels. Surely they would be the best case scenario. They all, however, come through the basic cable package for some reason without being blocked out or scrambled. Her tv doesn't have a cable card either. So I guess buying an external tuner with component input/outputs and then hooking up the tuner to tv with component cables won't improve standard definition or high definition? That's what I'm understanding from these responses.

Again, why do you think they could be improved? HD programming (are you sure it's HD?) in clear QAM is very likely the best you'll get on that TV via its internal tuner. OTOH, analog SD might be improved depending on the scaler of the TV. The question there is do you want to bother with adding stuff/expense/complexity for potentially marginally better PQ? And understand that sometime in the next 3 years all analog chs will probably go away - so even if you do find a solution for the SD analogs it will be short lived.

Okay, I think I understand better now. I guess I was thinking that simply changing her signal directly from coax into the tv to an external tuner and then thru component cables into the tv would improve overall pq. For the record, it's a 32 in olevia 232v. I don't suppose this particular tv has a crappy tuner? I just swear her sd channels don't look that good compared to my u-verse sd hooked up with component cables.

If you're talking about improving Standard Definition cable channels by using an external tuner, well that's entirely possible. Some do a better job of upscaling than the TV does. Some don't. But if she mostly watches network fare, then leave the added complication out of the equation and let the TVs tuner do it. The digital pictures (HD) won't be noticeably different.

I just swear her sd channels don't look that good compared to my u-verse sd hooked up with component cables.

Of course they do. U-verse and FIOS SD is uncompressed digital - the Charter SD (and most other cable cos) is analog or perhaps highly compressed digital. Combine that with an iffy scaler in that Olevia and I would certainly expect a much better PQ for your set up.

For the QAM chs with HD programming there won't be much of a diff - on the SD chs it could be huge. An STB may help in that case but it's unlikely you'll get to the PQ of u-verse SD - it's just a better signal to start.