Cable Co - giving HD channels

[mrbillpsu00]

Here's a real dumb question.

My cable company gives the HD channels over their coax coming to the house. When I do a scan on my TV, it shows the X-XX channel identifier.

This isn't something that I could use in the OTA port on my HD Tivo, is it?

[old7]

No

[Budget_HT]

Unless your cable company happened to be one of very few that are using 8-VSB instead of QAM for their HDTV signals.

A small number of cable companies were using 8-VSB, but not the largest companies. I don't know if any cable coompany still uses 8-VSB because it uses more bandwidth than QAM.

So even if the cable company is using 8-VSB, it is highly likely that they will change to QAM sometime down the road.

[lostman72]

No your Tivo should not work. Your TV might have a QAM tuner that's why you are getting does channels. Most cable co. pass local HD channels in the clear, and things like HBO you won't get with out a decoder. (cable card or a box from them.) Directv's HD tivo has a ATSC tuner (Digtal only) Most cable Co. don't pass ATSC, they only pass QAM. You will have to get a Ser 3 Tivo, that unit has Qam if you want to record what your cable co. has.