[PrestonD]

Hi,


Sorry I am kinda new to this so please excuse my ignorance on the subject matter.


I was wandering around Sears in their electronics department and saw my Sony VVega 46" LCD HDTV and enjoyed the HD reception. I snuck a peek around the back of the tv and saw just a coax cable connected to it.


I thought for HDTV that you had to have HDMI or component connected to it. I do understand that there is the ASTC tuner but I dont understand how they are distributing the HDTV broadcast. I inquired with the sales staff who are somewhat limited in their tech knowledge and they didnt really have a clue. They did let me take a peek at what they had in a closet. It appears to be a dvd player connected with ethernet (they did say that Sears downloads content periodically via internet).


The only thing I can figure out is that they must use some sort of HDTV upconvert (but the picture was good!) or some sort of RF or digital modulator to distribute the HDTV.


Does anyone have an idea on what and how they do this? Perhaps a Sears insider?


Thanks!

Preston

 

[HDTVFanAtic]

There are plenty of devices that will accomplish feeding an ATSC tuner with pre-recorded transport streams on an ATSC Channel frequency. They are not cheap though and they are nothing like a simple NTSC modulator.

 

[PrestonD]

Hi,


Thanks for the update, I was at Circuit City and they have what looks to be similar setup but no one at the store could really adequately explain what they do. In fact none of the stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, etc) have anybody that really knows much about HDTV to answer my questions in any depth. they begin to tell me information and when they start telling me things that I know are not technically true I tune them out (no pun intended)


Regards,

Preston

 

[biker19]

If that was a regular DVD player you weren't seeing HD. And the distribution of the signals could be QAM.

 

[gab2409]

(unless they've changed something over the past year)

the coax serves as a way to get the loop from dvd. they should also have componenet hooked up to each tv, which gets them the hd feed from satellite. if you look closely, you'll see a white box that accepts the component in, and provides 6-7 component outs. they are daisy chained(think thats the term) throughout the hd displays.

 

[gab2409]

thats the way my two sears stores did things...maybe it's progressed since then.