Thank, Mikie. Yeah, I saw the "consumer alert" on the pre-digital tuner sets displayed at the stores. Well, we made our purchase, yet this time the sales guy said we won't need a cable box after 2009 "just because" (like the first guy said) on the new sets (for basic cable programming), just for the old analog sets. Guess we'll find out then....... Tracey

ok, so now i'm really confused. bought a vizio flat panel hdtv (lcd). it has both digital and analogue tuners in it and it's an hd set, not hd ready. i thought the cards were only for hd ready sets, that hd would not need one. anyway, here's my current problem. i did the channel scan on set up and it said it added 75 analogue channels and 66 digital channels. when i started changing channels, i was totally thrilled to find that i had several hd channels. no doubt about it. most channels are boxed in with the bars on the sides. on the hd channels, it filled the screen with crystal clear, no distortion picture and also there was the hd channel displayed onscreen for some seconds. going up the channel line-up, a few of these channels displayed like this: what i normally get as channel 4 (abc) was standard (but clearly digital). then, there was a 4-1 and a 4-2 added. 4-1 was hd. same with 11. i got an 11-1 and it was hd. the problem? i'm getting there, lol. i had those hd channels for 2 days and now some of them are gone!!! i still have 2 or 3 hd channels but others are gone (including the 4-1). i did another scan, in case they just slipped off the radar for some reason but they are still gone. so, is this a cable thing or a tv thing. and where did they go???

I have an old small TV with a built-in antenna in my kitchen. Just bought a digital converter box and it's small and just sits on top of the TV - but you probably couldn't do that with a newer flat screen TV. If you can live without the premium channels in your kitchen, you MIGHT be able to feed the cable directly into your TV without the cable box and use the tuner on the TV to select channels. But that would really depend on both the particular cable company and your TV - these days not all cable companies still provide an analog feed and newer TVs don't have an analog tuner.

Jn3344 - we are still under construction.. My builder decided that he would wait until he heard snow was in forecast (NJ) and then decided to rip out sidewalks.. We then uncovered a water leak and a sewer issue.. So now we are still waiting on water company to finish (going on 3 weeks) so that sidewalks can be poured and we can apply for temporary co.. It's been a mess and every time we get a glimmer of hope we get crushed by something.. It's just been an overall mess with this builder.. Guy had nice weather up until February and decides that's when he wants to do outside work.. It amazes me.. Basically the inside of house is complete.. Minor touch ups with paint and some misc items that need fixing.. But everything else inside is good to go.. Oh and we took a visit at site and uncovered this mess..