In my "cablehood", Comcast still has analog cable for those who prefer to go without STB's and of course digital cable. They also simulcast the analog channels digitally (confirmed this using the QAM tuner in my HDTV). Still, I was surprised to find out that my trusty SA3250HD, when tuned to an analog channel, (Turner Classic Movies) was smart enough to pick up the digital simulcast and pump it out the firewire port to the Mits HD2000u DVCR- (YES, it really made a DIGITAL recording). Just good to know.

--hourglass

I've had similar experience w/Motorola 64whatever box, where analog 'SD' channels were either picked off digital simulcast or perhaps even encoded by the tuner box and sent over firewire digitally. Since some? most? were not 5C'd, one could use CapDVHS etc to record them as well.