Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions HDTV cable card

Alan: thanks for the description. It makes sense that different cable boxes may provide different performance.

I don't use a cable card or a cable box with my Sony. I just use the internal tuner with the cable. The TV upconverts the SD stations to 1080P and the HD 720P or 1080I are upconverted to 1080P.

The upconverted SD stations look good, but the HD station look GREAT. The WOW factor is really there.

These aren't the long awaited cable cards that TiVo's been holding out for, are they?

Oh please oh please oh please standalone HDTiVo...

No, I'm not using either a cable card or a cable box!!!

Ratpack,
I'm curious why you're not having to use a box or card with your cable. I wonder if I can do that? hmmm.

Charlie

Well, I don't use a box or card with my cable... because I've got good ol' analog cable!

Rat, I was just sort of tagging onto the chain of posts...

cgolf: I have something a little "fishy" going on. I have ComCast cable.

When I first got my SXRD and went through setup there was an autoprogram feature. I used this to automatically capture all of my cable stations.

When it was through (took about an hour), I scanned through the channels to see what it found. It had all the usual channels. However, at about channel 100, it found a bunch more that were not whole channel numbers like 88 or 87 or 89. They were 104.1, 104.5, 112.7, etc.

On these series of .XX channels I had NBC, CBS, FOX, TNT and PBS high definition reception. No ABC or ESPN HD. I called ComCast and asked the rep for a complete listing of these channels because I wanted to make sure that I had them all. The rep had NO idea of what I was talking about. Next day, I called again and talked to a different rep. Same story. What a bunch of BS!!

Well, earlier this week, I heard that the local ComCast has now started broadcasting ABC HD on channel 180. So, I did another complete autoprogram, and, sure enough, I now get ABC HD on channel 92.15.

I really don't know what is going on because the ComCast reps know nothing about it YET IT IS THERE!!!!

Go Figure??????

You might try autoprogram and see what you get with your TV.

I have to agree with Ratpack here. My 50 SXRD is picking up signals of broadcasts higher than the tier I pay for. Now Charter does not have HD digital in my area, so I just get more digital. Charter is also rebroadcasting analog signals as digital feeds.

Anyone else notice this without a cable card or cable box?

I can confirm that I have seen a difference between using a cable box and hooking the cable directly to my HDTV.

I just got a Panasonic TH-42PX50U Plasma HDTV and before Comcast could get out to add the HDTV box I hooked the cable directly to the TV. Well all was good I got all my channels and then some as the TVs SD and HT tuners pulled in all the channels and even some digital channels I was not subscribed to.

After the comcast Motorola HD cable box was added I
was watching E-Ring in HD on a Local Broadcast Channel. I notice severe pixialation and blocking during fast action scences that I had never seen before.

So I am going to get the cable card installed as this will allow me to use the TVs tunners and not the Cable Box. By the way in my area the cable card is free.

I need to figure out how to keep the Cable box so I can use the On Demand functionality of the Cable box if this will be possible if not I will move the box upstairs to another TV.

Hope this info helps

I have read quite a bit on cable cards and cable boxes, even though I don't have or use one.

I agree with Alan that there can be differences between the many brands of cable boxes and cable cards because of the differences in tuners. Not all are created equal.

But, I have also seen many comments about poor picture quality that ended up being a function of wrong settings between the cable box and the TV. I would read the cable box instruction manual a couple of times and then "play" with the settings.

By the way, how are you connecting between the cable box and the TV?

If you want to use both a cable box and a cable card, all you need is a cable two-way splitter. One of the splitter ends goes to your cable box and then whatever connection from the cable bax to the TV. The other splitter end goes directly into your TV cable input.

All of this presumes that you have multiple inputs for your TV (cable, HDMI, component, etc.).