Newbie Help...

[8609CGB]

Hello. I've had a series 2 unit for a while now. After Christmas I am going to be getting an 1080p television... I don't think i'll be able to drop the cash on a series 3 unit yet, though...

that to ask, if i get an HD cable or satellite receiver, can I still hook up my series 2 to it and just record non-HD shows? also, does a normal cable/satellite package come with non-HD versions of the HD channels (i.e. regular ESPN in addition to ESPNHD)

Thanks very much,

Chris.

[gastrof]

Whatever your cable or satellite provider has is what they have.

You'd have to work that out with them.

Can HD equipment work with, for example, a standard TV?

Yes.

If you have an HD cable or satellite box, you can set it to work with a standard TV or VCR...

...or TiVo...

...and everything will be fine.

The only thing you WON'T get is HD picture quality.

The picture will be "downconverted" to Standard Definition quality so's to be usable by the "standard def" or "analog" television device.

The one downer here is that unless your HD box can be set to feed a High Def picture out thru one output, and a Standard Def picture out thru another, there's no way to use the box with your TiVo and also get an HD quality picture on your new High Def TV.

Some people have contented themselves with feeding the HD box into their TiVo, downconverted, naturally, and let the SD picture go from the TiVo to the high def TV.

Others have split their cable feed, and sent analog TV only to their TiVo, and used the other cable to feed their HD box (which in turn fed the TV), allowing the TiVo and HD box to go into the TV by SEPARATE inputs.

How you work it all out is up to you.

[8609CGB]

What if I got an HDTV that had cablecard slots (thus no cable box)

then could I hook up the series 2 and record standard definition programming while still being able to view HD programming?

[Jonathan_S]

What if I got an HDTV that had cablecard slots (thus no cable box)

then could I hook up the series 2 and record standard definition programming while still being able to view HD programming?
By splitting the cable before the TV you should be able to do that. However you would be restricted to the analog cable channels the TiVo could pick up with its internal tuner.

Any digital (but standard def) cable channels could not be recorded by the TiVo because it wouldn't have a cable box to decode them. Same goes for any scrambled analog channels (if your cable system still had such things).
And of course with nothing to down-convert the HD channels the TiVo wouldn't be able to record anything from them at all (even in standard def).