[STayfair]

I get AT&T Digital Cable here in Schaumburg, IL. The service is good and for the most part, the picture I get on my Toshiba 57HX81 is surprisingly clear.


I was wondering what the advantages were, if any, to feeding my cable coax (which now goes from outside to cable box to TV) from outside into my Sony HDTV receiver, then to my cable box then to my TV...or from outside to cable box, to receiver to TV?


At the moment ATT doesn't offer any HD programming, although they have announced this Summer they will be adding Showtime, HBO, FOX and CBS in HD thru their digital cable.


To receive that HD broadcast from them they've said you have to rent a "box" at 10.95/ month...it would be nice to find out that any STB (mine in particular) would work and I could save myself 10.95/month.


Unfortunately, everyone I've talked to at my local ATT office (including a good friend who installs ATT cable out here) knows nothing, or so close to nothing they are no help.

 

[John Mason]

When AT&T begins its HDTV service it appears cerain they'll deliver the signals in cable's QAM format, perhaps 256QAM. That means most HDTV tuner/decoders such as your Sony won't handle QAM so running the cable to them initially won't work.


I do run my digital cable to a 1-GHz splitter, with one splitter cable going to my HDTV cable converter, the other splitter cable going to my set's built-in HDTV tuner/decoder. The reason: my cable company delivers one HDTV channel, CBS, in the 8-VSB format of OTA signals. Last summer they had two such 8-VSB channels, which can be tuned just as if you'd connected a UHF antenna. (They also deliver 4 HDTV channels via cable's 256QAM format, as AT&T there will.) Unless you're positive AT&T there doesn't do this at the moment, might pay to check past threads here about 8-VSB via cable in the Chicago area. Cable company representatives are sometimes unaware of 8-VSB HDTV channels.


So, seems as though the only advantage for you at the moment for a direct cable/tuner connect is to view and/or tape any standard analog channels before they reach the converter. Such viewing can provide superior images to converter outputs (less signal processing), and provide some channels you can tape while watching other channels (converter output). -- John

 

[STayfair]

Thanks for the reply John, I'll see what I can find out about how AT&T is going to deliver that signal, although as you say...it appears certain that it won't be in the 8-VSB format my STB can handle.


As far as connecting my cable coax to my HDTV receiver, I might try that just to see if I can see a difference (skipping my cable box altogether?).


Thanks

 

[Stanton]

You can certainly plug your *analog* cable feed into the HD-100 and decode standard cable (I do that with the non-digital UHF in). I use all the inputs on my HD-100:

1) analog cable

2) OTA digital (HDTV)

3) satellite

BTW, I think I posted on another one of your HD-100 threads today.

 

[krs7272]

I also used to run my analog cable thru my HD100 and that is the only complaint I have about my HD100 is it made the PQ much worse. But they finally unhooked it from the pole so whatever. And to comment on this AT&T and ota situation the HD100 can only accept one digital or analog signal at a time requiring an A/B switch. And in the case of analog also requiring a channel rescan.


Chris

 

[John Mason]

Quote:

At the moment ATT doesn't offer any HD programming, although they have announced this Summer they will be adding Showtime, HBO, FOX and CBS in HD thru their digital cable.

As I mentioned above, any OTA HDTV tuner/decoder should be able to receive 8-VSB HDTV delivered via cable. About 10 months back another Schaumburg member, Scott Stieglitz, mentioned he was able to get CBS over cable in this 7/30/01 post . Might be a different cable service. There used to be a thread (perhaps bumped as dated), provided by someone from CBS that listed all the Chicago-area cable systems with CBS HDTV. -- John

 

[JorgeGVB]

I have Cox Cable, I run it through my HD-100 and it works fine. I can seemlessly change channels from OTA, OTA-HD, Cable and DirecTV . No switching back in forth between the cable and the receiver. This is a great feature for the wife and the kids. The only bummer is the program guide does not work for the cable and the OTA channels.

 

[CKNA]

Some Digital STB receive QAM64/256. For example Samsung. I am not sure about Sony though. Even if your box receives QAM you will not get premium channels as those will be encrypted anyway. Only OTA channels may be in clear mode.