Anybody get digital cable withOUT extra box or CableCard?

[jtodd929]

I currently get analog cable: I just plug an F-pin into tivo and I'm good.

Is it possible to get digital cable this way? Or must I have either a CableCard or an extra Box?

PS: I have a digital TV with all digital tuners.

[RoyK]

If you hook your TV directly (or with a splitter) to the cable then you can pick up unscrambled digital signals with your TV. Same with a Series 3 TiVo which also has digital tuners. Assuming, of course, that you are paying for digital service from your cable company.

Some -- if not all -- cable companies also provide Digital and High Definition signals for local channels in their lowest tier of service.
You'll probably need to hunt for the HD channels though, they like to be sneaky and not divulge where they are (mine are at 104.1 & up). They want you to pay for a Settop box that will map them to the 'right' channel numbers like 7.1

[ah30k]

The problem with this method of receiving digital channels is that you get no guide data and can't record shows (other than manual time/ch recording).

[jtodd929]

How come I can get analog cable without any additional boxes. And I can get QAM digital channels without any additional boxes. But I can't get "Digital Cable" service from cable company without cablecard or a box?

Comcast says I must have a box. But I get QAM channels. Why do I need a box?

[JimSpence]

Because the cable company is scrambling the channels, thus the need for another box to descramble them. Those QAM channels are mandated by the FCC since they are your local OTA channels.

[jtodd929]

Because the cable company is scrambling the channels, thus the need for another box to descramble them. Those QAM channels are mandated by the FCC since they are your local OTA channels.

How come the cable company scrambles digital but not analog? I've always had analog cable and never needed box, for example.

[Stu_Bee]

They compress digital signals but not analog....Your TV doesn't know what to do with a digital signal so thats why the cable box is there.
This is why cable companies are trying to get rid of analog and be just digital...the bandwidth savings in addition to the two way communication to allow other features such as ppv.

[Stephen Tu]

How come the cable company scrambles digital but not analog? I've always had analog cable and never needed box, for example

Customer demand, mainly. Most customers don't want to deal with STB if they don't have to. And some analog channels were scrambled (using different methods from digital); HBO before it was moved to exclusively digital used to be routinely scrambled on most systems. Some places like NYC also scrambled a lot more channels than elsewhere, to discourage cable theft.

But for digital, before TVs started including digital tuners/cablecards, you HAD to have a STB anyway. And once you force customer to have a box the cable company also has a natural desire for "conditional access", so that they have finer control over what channels you get & can sell you different tiers of programming. If they didn't encrypt, they wouldn't be able to effectively charge extra for people to access certain channels.

[JimSpence]

Back before digital existed, analog premium channels were scrambled. HBO comes to mind. You needed an STB to watch it.

[jtodd929]

Comcast wants to charge me $20 to install a cablecard. they have no M-Cards, only S-cards. I like to have my TV have a signal too, so I'd need 3 cable cards (2 for TivoHD and 1 for TV). Comcast wants $60 for installation fee (3 cablecards, $20 each installation charge).

Doesn't this seem exorbitant. Seems criminal.

They won't let me install the things myself.

[Dan203]

They're regulated by the FCC as to what they can charge for the card itself on a monthly basis, so to make up for it some cable companies gouge customers on the installation and/or by charging "extra outlet" fees for each card beyond the first one.

Dan

[jtodd929]

They're regulated by the FCC as to what they can charge for the card itself on a monthly basis, so to make up for it some cable companies gouge customers on the installation and/or by charging "extra outlet" fees for each card beyond the first one.

Dan

Is there anything that can be done? Or is the customer stuck: pay the exorbitant fee or do without cablecards?

[Dan203]

You're stuck. You may be able to argue with someone and get a discount. But if you're not that type then you'll just have to pay the fee. Luckily it's a one time deal.

Dan

[mattack]

How come the cable company scrambles digital but not analog? I've always had analog cable and never needed box, for example.

Did you ever get HBO or other premium channels? If so, it is very likely that you would have needed a box in those cases.

(I used to be in one of the rare areas where I could get HBO and some other premium channels without a box. That was great.. Then they started moving more and more to digital, so I just unsubscribed from them. Plus that was around when I started renting movies more instead.)

Plus, if you remember trying to tune 'strambled' channels, that's the same thing.

BTW, if you were happy with analog cable before, you might just want to stick with analog cable and put up an antenna for OTA HDTV channels. That obviously doesn't require a cable card. So you only need a cable card if you want to be able to tune to digital channels (including getting guide data for the 'free' broadcast channels on cable).

[HVYCHVY]

Comcast wants to charge me $20 to install a cablecard. they have no M-Cards, only S-cards. I like to have my TV have a signal too, so I'd need 3 cable cards (2 for TivoHD and 1 for TV). Comcast wants $60 for installation fee (3 cablecards, $20 each installation charge).

Doesn't this seem exorbitant. Seems criminal.

They won't let me install the things myself.

Since they are going to charge you 3 setup charges, request it be done three different days in a row. Since the bos will alreay be out, you would think it would be easier doing it all at once.

I didn't mind getting HBO over analog cable, but when they movedit to dgital, you needing the STB and extra fee's for the box and additional programming.....it wasn't worth the price to see the same movies 20 times a month.

[jtodd929]

has anybody seen a cablecard installed? What exactly does the tech have to do? Is it complicated? Plug the thing in, then what needs to be done?

[RonDawg]

Plug the thing in. A bunch of numbers appear on the screen. The tech (or sometimes you the consumer) reads these numbers off to someone at the cable provider.

[jtodd929]

Is there a way to get the cable company to let you install the thing yourself? maybe pass less installation fee?

[RonDawg]

Doubtful. Those cableco's that insist it be a truck roll have their specific reasons for it.

[wkearney99]

Bull, the only 'specific reason' is bumbling through their service department trying to speak with someone that can actually type the right info into their system. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but it sure seems like they've deliberate made the process trouble prone. Perhaps so they can turn around and demand it be dropped as being 'too onerous'. It's a lie, of course, but one they'll probably spend 10 times as much lobbying against that it would have cost to support properly.

[bicker]

they'll probably spend 10 times as much lobbying against that it would have cost to support properly.You cannot possibly believe that. Corporations exist to make profit for their owners, and make decisions based on what best supports that. They won't deliberately spend more to oppose something than it would cost to not oppose it.

With respect, this kind of rhetoric is what is wrong with some of these discussions. A lot of folks are saying things out of frustration and anger, rather than as a result of thought and consideration.

[wkearney99]

I've certainly given it 'thought and consideration', so please spare me the high-and-mighty insulting tone.

10 times the cost would quite likely still be quite a lot less than the profits they'd be gaining by retaining proprietary control over the boxes. Just look at the scheme of lies they perpetrated to avoid equal access over fiber.

There's of course the old saying 'never ascribe to malice that which can be equally explained by stupidity'. But in the case of a telco that's never been true.

[ewilts]

Comcast wants to charge me $20 to install a cablecard. they have no M-Cards, only S-cards. I like to have my TV have a signal too, so I'd need 3 cable cards (2 for TivoHD and 1 for TV). Comcast wants $60 for installation fee (3 cablecards, $20 each installation charge).

Doesn't this seem exorbitant. Seems criminal.

They won't let me install the things myself.
When Comcast came out to install mine - on a SUNDAY - they charged me about $15 for a truck roll to install 2 CableCARDs - you certainly can't complain that! My basic digital starter package includes the cost of both CableCARDs and Digital Starter is I think $1.99 per month more than Extended Basic and for this I get almost all of the HD stations.

You can try and ask Comcast to charge you only $20 in total for the 3 cards and see what they say... If they say no, ask to speak to the service cancellation department and suggest to them that you're looking at switching to DirecTV or Dish (even if you're not).

Around here, I think the prices are currently fair (they didn't use to be - they wanted to charge me for an "additional digital outlet" for the 2nd CableCARD plus they also charged $1.50 per month for the 2nd CableCARD too).

.../Ed

[RonDawg]

Bull, the only 'specific reason' is bumbling through their service department trying to speak with someone that can actually type the right info into their system. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but it sure seems like they've deliberate made the process trouble prone. Perhaps so they can turn around and demand it be dropped as being 'too onerous'. It's a lie, of course, but one they'll probably spend 10 times as much lobbying against that it would have cost to support properly.

I'm not one to defend the cableco's (a recent thread will prove otherwise) but from what I've read here, those that won't allow you to do your own CableCard install are pretty insistent about it.

I agree that it doesn't take a genius to read off the numbers (and yet my first tech didn't get that part right). However a good tech will also check your signal to make sure it's strong (but not too strong) and clean and possibly fix other issues while he/she is there.

For the last 3 weeks I was having a problem receiving Discovery HD Theater and the tech who came out yesterday streamlined my cabling (excessive splitters) and also replaced some of the connectors and those few splitters he left attached. Not only did I get Discovery HD Theater back (finally!) but it also improved the picture on my analog TV in the bedroom.

[Adam1115]

How come the cable company scrambles digital but not analog? I've always had analog cable and never needed box, for example.

They used to, but it is REALLY easy to descramble the signal on your own. So if they were going to have to supply a STB ANYWAY, they might as well move channels they are going to 'scramble' to digital... which is exactly what they did.

[bicker]

I've certainly given it 'thought and consideration', so please spare me the high-and-mighty insulting tone. Again, no insult was projected. I was speaking plainly. And your following paragraph makes it clear that you didn't mean what you said earlier:10 times the cost would quite likely still be quite a lot less than the profits they'd be gaining by retaining proprietary control over the boxes.So your earlier statements about what it would "cost to support properly" didn't include the opportunity costs associated with retaining proprietary control over the boxes. That was my point.

[jtodd929]

I assume Cableco scrample signals to avoid theft. How come all the honest subscribers have to pay for this (with rental fees and installation fees etc).

Shouldn't the money save from the theft pay for the deployment of descrambling.

It's WRONG that the honest folk have to foot the bill!

[wkearney99]

I assume Cableco scrample signals to avoid theft. How come all the honest subscribers have to pay for this (with rental fees and installation fees etc).

Shouldn't the money save from the theft pay for the deployment of descrambling.

It's WRONG that the honest folk have to foot the bill!

Your logic doesn't work. And you pay for loss prevention in all sorts of things you purchase. Clothes, food, fuel, even health care all have security expenses designed to avoid loss. Sure, more honesty on the part of your fellow man would be great... but between now and Hell freezing over it's unlikely that the signals will get descrambled.

[ZeoTiVo]

It's WRONG that the honest folk have to foot the bill!
and it is wrong that the content owners have to loose money to theft as well. The world is not fair and the law only reasonably fair with the not infrequent glaring exceptions. Man was perfect but found that completely boring and chose to leave Eden ;)

[exigent2]

I do field collections for a major cable provider as a contractor. Its all about control. They can remotely deactivate your STB and it costs them almost nothing to do so. This is quite good for them when you forget to pay your bill. I don't have hard numbers but I would guess 90% of people pay the bill (after having STB's shutoff) before I get the order to go try to collect or physically disconnect the line. Maybe 60% of people are smart enough to just plug the coax directly into the tv. (remember these people don't pay their bills) Of those 60%, quite a few are still going without internet and now possibly phone service as well. In other words they have a strong encouragement to pay the bill.

Trust me... its VERY expensive to send me out to collect on the bill or physically disconnect the line. They /REALLY/ like being able to turn your services off themselves.

You guys mentioned cable cards... my group went on over 10,000 collection trips this year and ONE of us removed a cable card from a non-paying customers house. People who have tv's with cable card slots and use them apparently pay the bill MUCH more often then those with set top boxes or analog basic. Ive never had the chance to play with one but I would guess that when we deactivate the cable card you have NO tv until you remove the card (if you can). Would this be true? Perhaps they want to install the cable card so they can lock the thing in? Our stb with cable card slots have lockable slots...

[nester]

Lock it in? I'd be pretty pissed if the cable company attached their equipment to mine in such a way that I couldn't separate their property from my own by myself. That's worse than the time they came and put those copper covers over the splices outside the house I was renting in to try to keep us from splitting the cable... Okay, we were paying for one sub and sharing it throughout the house which was rented out on 8 separate leases, but we were college students. :) Point being, I bought a hacksaw since I couldn't afford a dremel at the time. You can't attach your stuff to mine in a way that keeps me from removing it... that's just not a good way to do business, and shouldn't be legal if it is. In this case you'd be preventing me from using my own TV how I wanted to until I paid you (at least a visit) to remove your card from my TV. If I want to change providers I shouldn't need your help, nor if I buy a new TV and want to move the card into that one, or move it from the living room to the bedroom if I am only paying for one "outlet". That should mean one at a time, not an immovable TV access point.

Another sore point for me is the requirement for a visit to have service initiated. Why can't I just leave my TV on and visible from a window? Why should I have to miss work to get cable installed? I got my phone installed while I was at work. They told me to call them if it didn't work (lol).

[Bsteenson]

... I agree that it doesn't take a genius to read off the numbers (and yet my first tech didn't get that part right). However a good tech will also check your signal to make sure it's strong (but not too strong) and clean and possibly fix other issues while he/she is there. ...

The Mediacom tech who came to install my cable cards had A) never installed a cable card before, in anything; B) never seen a TiVo before in person. After taking five minutes to convince him he really was installing the cards in "that box over there" instead of in the TV, I found he had only come out with one S card, in spite of specifically and repeatedly telling the service rep on the phone that I needed two cards (and they really should send more because some are likely to not work).

He installed the one card he had (with me walking him through the steps with the directions from TiVo), then went out to get another card. He came back with just one more (despite me telling him it would be a good idea to bring a couple) and of course it didn't work. On his third trip back to the service department he finally brought out a couple of more cards and of those the second one he tried worked.

Instead of me wasting three hours (one hour of waiting for him to arrive originally "between 10 a.m. and noon" and then two more hours while he drove all the way out to the service building and back twice) I could have installed both cards in about 10 minutes if they had simply let me pick up three or four cards and let me bring back the ones I didn't need or that didn't work.

Oh, and he did absolutely nothing to check signal strength or make sure I was getting the channels I was supposed to be getting. It was, "OK, is everything working now? Fine, sign here ..."

BS

[jlb]

Don't forget, somehow Comcast will likely screw up your appointment and then credit you $20 for "your troubles", thus negating the truck roll fee.

That assumes they are not gouging you on the truck roll fee.

I had a long-winded install, but the truck roll wsa only $17.95, they had an M card, and thus my net result is I made a few $ and there will be no change in my monthly fee.

[jtodd929]

sounds to me like the control that STB and CableCard give the Cableco makes and saves them money in the end. How come all the honest customers have to pay for it.

[kwbdc]

Does the digital starter package include HD ESPN and Discovery etc if you have a cablecard?

[mattack]

Back before digital existed, analog premium channels were scrambled. HBO comes to mind. You needed an STB to watch it.

Not in all areas. I had HBO for a long time with no box - it was trapped outside my house.
Oh, those were the days.

[mattack]

How come I can get analog cable without any additional boxes.

(Questions should have question marks at the end of them.)

That is because your TV has a "cable ready" tuner.

Digital tuner + CableCard is essentially the analogue (no pun intended) of that.

[LifeIsABeach]

Does the digital starter package include HD ESPN and Discovery etc if you have a cablecard?

That all depends on your cable company. If the channels are in the digital starter package and they are not SDV channels then the answer is yes.

[WO312]

Does the digital starter package include HD ESPN and Discovery etc if you have a cablecard?
What LifeIsABeach said.

For example, TWC here includes the following HD channels with basic digital service:

All local channels including PBS, ESPN, ESPN2, A&E, Discovery Theater,TNT, TBS, VS/Golf, MTV, HGTV, Food Network, and National Geographic. They have added several of those just recently and I hope they keep adding.

YMMV.

[hsfjr]

has anybody seen a cablecard installed? What exactly does the tech have to do? Is it complicated? Plug the thing in, then what needs to be done?

My opinion: If everything ended up working correctly, you could have done it yourself. (Couple sets of numbers [host and card numbers maybe] provided back to some operations center to tie it all together in the computers... But take a look at some of the other threads on installs - it seems a good number of them are not smooth.

If you've ever tried to (over the phone) help a friend out with PC problems, you quickly realize the value of someone knowledgable being on-site to see what is happening... (I've been on phone with my aunt and PC problems and I just need a quick summary of what the screen says, probably towards the bottom... and she reads me the entire screen starting with Window's top blue bar... takes forever...) So, yes, a lot of us [here] could get the proper numbers back to cable co ourselves, but the majority of the [general] population probably can't...

And once the install doesn't work properly, the diagnostic screens present a lot of stuff that doesn't make any sense to a "regular user"... the guys that have experience installing the cards can flip around the screen and realize that the card needs to be "hit" again (or whatever). And the diag screens aren't even enabled in the menus until the card is in, so I was flipping around TiVo prior to installers arriving thinking "how hard could it be...? here's the menu items..."

My install had a couple of subcontracting noobs bringing out the card. (And they were many hours late (after 7pm) due to earlier installs - probably had to fish a drop in some wall that didn't have attic over it or something.) But they got support from an employee installer who did know what he was doing and he also came out to the house [he was happy to since he was probably getting "double time" by then or something - he had been done for the day, but this caused him to go "on" again - haven't figured out if it is the same guy who posts here or not].

And then we had the typical problems... first card didn't work right away so tried a second card, but gave first card's numbers to operations center so second card still didn't work... eventually figured out that even the first set of numbers was the wrong numbers... the diag screens show LOTS of numbers... MAC address, IP address, Host ID, Card id, etc... easy to not get the right ones first.

But... since it still only took them one visit, I consider my install "successful". (I think I also ended up with the "missed appt" credit, but I didn't ask for it since I was glad that it only took the one trip and I think they were gone by 10pm.)

[mattack]

(I've been on phone with my aunt and PC problems and I just need a quick summary of what the screen says, probably towards the bottom... and she reads me the entire screen starting with Window's top blue bar... takes forever...)

I have a perfect solution for that -- get her a better computer. Gee, I hear a particular 'fruit company' makes really good computers.