hey gand wanted to know how to i pick up hd channels with renting a box for the cable company i just bought a hd tv and when it did the scan it showed a wopping 230 digtial chanels that it found i am about 1 and 1/2 hr north of philia kinda in a rural signal strenghth was great when i did the scan any ideas thanks

The HD channels for you cable boxk will be on differnt channels numbers than the SD channels.
For example with my Motorola cable box from COX the "HD" channels start at channel 700.
I don't understand why you had the TV do a scan. Doesn't the digital cable box come with its own program guide and arn't you using component or HDM/DVI output as the source to your HDTV and not any of the TVs own tuners?

i dont have the cable box i dont have the qam tuner either any sugestions really dont want to get a converter box form the cable company any ideas

If you don't have a QAM tuner, you won't get ANY digital channels
If you have an ATSC tuner you could hook up an antenna but if you're far from the Philly towers, you'll need a good rooftop antenna

Lacking a QAM tuner, you'll either need said antenna or a Cable Box from the cable company.

ok thanks no roof antenna guess ill call cable company is the qam tuners the thing of the future will the cable companys pick up on this or what dont want to take it back if i dont have to just for the qam tuner i have like 25 days to ret this if i want but it a great pic just buit a custom shelf for it so really dont want to take it back

If you want to watch "HD" programs on you new HDTV you have to get "HD" progarming from somwhere.Otherwise you wasted a lot of money buying an HDTV which probalby displays SD programs worse then the TV you replaced.

what about buy a converter box off ebay anyone know anything about them

Won't help unless you subscribe to the HD programming and most likely will not be compatible with the cable company.

what about buy a converter box off ebay anyone know anything about them
What kind of converter box are you referring to?
Have you checked with antennaweb. org to see if you have any OTA digital channels in your remote area which you could watch using the ATSC tuner in your HDTV?
When you did the scan what were you scanning a standard cable connection to your TV? If yes then it appears that you do have QAM capability and you might be able to find the unencrypted HD digital channels on the cable

What kind of converter box are you referring to?
Have you checked with antennaweb. org to see if you have any OTA digital channels in your remote area which you could watch using the ATSC tuner in your HDTV?
When you did the scan what were you scanning a standard cable connection to your TV? If yes then it appears that you do have QAM capability and you might be able to find the unencrypted HD digital channels on the cable



the converter box that the cable companys give to you, when i did the scan i clicked on set up the clicked my 2 chioces air or cable i checked cable did the scan got like 77 analoge channels and 250 digital cannels but get like 4 channels like 116.4 mat be hbo,116.2 maybe starz.and 1or 2 more movie channels,cant find abc,nbc,cbs,and so on any ideas?thought of buying a converter box that will work with my cable company but dont know where to find one and ideas on that
thanks alot

AFAIK there is no place you can buy a cable company compatible converter box at this time.
Maybe next fall in any case one would cost about $500 and at $5-10 per month for a monthly lease from your cable company the lease is a much better deal especially since if you were able to purchase one it would probbly be obsolete in a couple of years. And if you could find one it use a cable card and you would still have to lease that from your cable company in order to be able to decrypt the digital channel services that it offers.
Since you did not find any high frequency network channels maybe there are none that are also available for free OTA do your cable company does not have to provide any either.