Cablevision/HD

[APillowOfClouds]

Quick question for anyone with NY cablevision out there:

I used to have straight coax going into my tuner and actually tune everything with the tuner card and had no problem. But then when Cablevision started switching everything over to digital, I had to get converter boxes, which I HATE for many reasons, and start tuning them with a USB UIRT.

This is still the setup I'm using now, however, I just switched to two ATI 650PCI TV Wonder tuner cards. These cards have coax HD inputs as well as coax non-HD inputs. My question is, if I take the straight coax without the converter box and plug it into the HD coax input, will I be able to receive all the channels they took off of analog like courttv and msnbc without having to go through a cable box? I've heard rumours this can be done but I have not tried it.

I would just go ahead and try, it's just that I JUST got done switching to a new server and debugging the setup and my WAF will drop severely if I need to take it offline again to run more tests

[amg]

I am on Cablevision in NJ.

I still have many analog stations that I am capable of tuning directly off the coax with my PVR-150s. As far as the HD QAM stations. I use a HD-Homerun which will pretty much only get the broadcast networks in HD.

If you have a TV with a built-in QAM tuner, you will see all that you can get with a QAM tuner card.

I do also have a cablebox, which I use to capture those channels that are only available digitally, that I capture through S-Video, and change channels via firewire.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by APillowOfClouds

My question is, if I take the straight coax without the converter box and plug it into the HD coax input, will I be able to receive all the channels they took off of analog like courttv and msnbc without having to go through a cable box? I've heard rumours this can be done but I have not tried it.

You can go to the SiliconDust website's database to see what channels you might be able to get. Just put in your zip code. By default I think it gives you OTA channels you can receive, but there's a drop-down box on the results page that lets you switch to digital cable results.

However, are you in New York City? If so, then pretty soon you probably won't be able to get any digital channels using a QAM tuner. Pretty much everyone at least gets the local broadcast networks, but Cablevision in New York City requested and received a waiver to encrypt even the local broadcast networks. This just happened a few days ago, so Cablevision probably hasn't started to do that yet, but likely will do so in the near future.

[APillowOfClouds]

Thanks for the tips, judging from the silicondust website it looks like I could get MORE channels than I can with an analog tuner but not enough to be useful.