I'm a newbie to the digital world. To date, I've been using an analog tv tuner card with my basic cable subscription as sort of a super tivo. However, recently, I bought an AverTV Combo PCI-E card that is advertised as analog/digital with QAM (?) capabilites...

My questions:

1. If I only subscribe to the basic package, will I get "digital" broadcasts via coax or do I need a box?
2. Is there a noticable difference between digital cable and analog on a LCD monitor?
3. What audio encoding comes through in digital tv? I know analog is stereo but DD 5.1 would be nice over the air.
4. Finally, what exactly is QAM and is it useful to me if I don't have a digital box?

v/r

I'm a newbie to the digital world. To date, I've been using an analog tv tuner card with my basic cable subscription as sort of a super tivo. However, recently, I bought an AverTV Combo PCI-E card that is advertised as analog/digital with QAM (?) capabilites...

My questions:

1. If I only subscribe to the basic package, will I get "digital" broadcasts via coax or do I need a box?
2. Is there a noticable difference between digital cable and analog on a LCD monitor?
3. What audio encoding comes through in digital tv? I know analog is stereo but DD 5.1 would be nice over the air.
4. Finally, what exactly is QAM and is it useful to me if I don't have a digital box?

v/r
1. This card can pick up ATSC HD/DTV signals over the air with a better antenna (I use the Winegard Sharpshooter with great results), however if none of our local channels broadcast HD, this is a non-feature. As for DTV over cable, it really depends on your cable provider. In theory this card should be able to tune unencrypted digital channels in both SDTV and HDTV, but it's largely up to your cable company what is available. I believe avermedia just released the beta for QAM support. I use Windows Media Center with a hack that lets me record the digital channels over firewire.
2. Yes. HD channels are of course much better, but SD channels are free of the little bits of noise in analog broadcasts that wreaks havoc to the analog to digital conversion that takes place in your tv.
3. 5.1 is generally only on HD channels and not on all shows, but most network shows are in Dolby Digital 5.1. You of course need a sound card with an S/PDIF output and sometimes need to do some tweaks with AC3Filter to get the passthrough to work properly.
4. QAM is the standard for digital tv over cable. That's how digital HD and SD channels work. There are a number of ways to block recording by devices like the avertv combo, and QAM HD tends to be lower quality than ATSC HD over the air, due to extra compression on the QAM channel.