Is a tuner w/ more than 125 channels illegal?

[RageFury]

Is it against FCC regulations or something, to have a TV tuner work with more than 125 channels? What is the real reason behind this whole scam the cable companies are getting away with? It is rather annoying... :/

P.S., can a Remote Wonder II be used as a remote for a digital cable box?

[malore]

From http://ruel.net/pc/tv.tuner.getting....5.channels.htm

"The limitations of the TV Tuner card in directly getting only so many channels without a cable / satellite box is basically the same situation you have with the typical TV set that people have in their homes nowadays. So, you need the box. As far as I know, there is no such TV Tuner card that can more directly get more than 125 channels without attaching the cable box or the satellite box -- you need the box to get more than the 125 channels."

A lot more info is given on the page if you're interested. It's probably a matter of bandwitch for the cable companies. Cable systems are divided into several 6 MHz channels. For example, a system with 750 MHz of bandwidth has the capacity to deliver up to 125 channels.

Some TV's have tuners for 181 channels.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by RageFury

What is the real reason behind this whole scam the cable companies are getting away with?

Pretty much everything over about 100 is digital, which requires an entirely different kind of card, and probably encrypted so even with such a card it's unwatchable without a cable box to decrypt it.

Oh and FWIW, most digital channels fall into the 1-125 range, they are just mapped to channels much higher.

[jkf]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Oh and FWIW, most digital channels fall into the 1-125 range, they are just mapped to channels much higher.

Yep. Very few cable systems can use frequencies above channel 125, which is 800Mhz.
In order to provide more than 100 or so channels, cable companies must move to digital. By using a compressed digital signal, they are able to put about 6 digital channels in place of one analog.

Eventually, you may be able to buy a tv or tuner card that supports digital cable (try searching google for cablecard), but for now, you pretty much have to get a digital cable box from your cable company.

[stanger89]

Well the new Mitsubishi line supports CableCard, not that it does HTPCrs any good.

[mls]

Originally Posted by jkf

By using a compressed digital signal, they are able to put about 6 digital channels in place of one analog.

AFAIK, that only would be possible if those were 6 standard def converted to digital. Otherwise, only 1 at the highest HD level. If they all were full HD you won't can any bandwidth (or more channels).

[mls]

The dif between the 125 and 181 tuners was mostly advertising hype (bigger numbers are more impressive). Also, at one point the FCC dropped some of the UHF channels to there are less over the air channels.

Anyway, if they counted all the standard tv channels and then added only those for cable that didn't overlap they came up with 125. The others counted all the tv channels and all the cable channels (including those that over lapped again) to get a larger number of 181. Anything to make theirs sound more impressive. Gotta watch out for the advertising hype.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mls

AFAIK, that only would be possible if those were 6 standard def converted to digital. Otherwise, only 1 at the highest HD level. If they all were full HD you won't can any bandwidth (or more channels).

However they often aren't at the highest quality level, for example it's possible to (and some stations do) broadcast on HD and several SD sub channels on one OTA channel. The same could be done via digital cable. And with things like QAM which transmit more than one bit per symbol (QAM 256 would be 8 bits per symbol), it's probably possible to cram more than 6 digital SD channels down on analog channel's bandwidth.

[mls]

Agreed, but the actual number of channels doesn't change, only the fact that more programs can be carried on a given channel if they are lower resolution. Your simply picking which part of the data you want to watch out of the encoded signal on a channel. It's more like sub-channels within a channel, not more seperate channels.

That's also why they have channel designations like 24-1, 24-2, 24-3, etc. All are the same channel, just seperate programs within it.