Monday, January 28, 2008

Update to the Maine HDTV Forum - Digital TV and basic cable

It has been over a week since I have written any new posts to this blog. My goal is to keep up as much as possible with the mission of the blog so I want to at least provide some regular updates.

I have a few things in the fire but the most important is a question that arose this week about which I wrote to a few of my contacts to try and get a definitive answer.

According to published information about the conversion to digital television in February 2009, if you have an older analog TV but subscribe to a cable or satellite service, you should be all set and don't need to buy further equipment. As such, you wont' loose your signal.

I believe, but need to verify, that they are talking about people who subscribe to a cable or satellite service who have a set top box that comes with that service. If you have a set top box for your analog cable, digital cable, or satellite TV, that box comes with a separate remote. And with or without the analog/digital converter boxes that have recently been made available (well, the discount coupons are available) from the FCC, we need to know the answer to this question.

I don't believe they are talking about people who pay for cable but not the cable box, because they have a "cable ready" TV. A "cable ready" TV is a TV that will accept the coax cable/satellite company directly into the coax connection on your TV, no cable box required.

So I have posed this question to my cable company, who did not know the answer, believe it or not. I am assuming I was speaking with someone new as they suggested I call back when it gets closer to the conversion date.

Next, I posed the question to my DTV expert folks who are in the TV broadcasting industry. It would be in their best interest to know the answer to this question as well since their DTV and HDTV can be received for free over the air, bypassing cable/satellite completely.

I hope to have an answer soon and will let you know as soon as I find out.

No comments: