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CableCard vs Cable box

17 years ago

Not sure which way to go when I do buy. Looking at the Samsung 40" LCD for Bedroom, wall mounted. Comcast is my service provider.

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Comments (11)

mike1117
17 years ago
CableCard Pros & Cons

Pros
-technically you get a better connection with your cable going direct to the tv instead of through the cable box. Reality is you will most likely never notice the difference.
-your tv may do a better job scaling the picture to your tv than your cable box. Again, will you really notice any difference?
-no box = lower rental fees, cleaner look, etc.

Cons
-No interactive features available at this time through CableCard (i.e. pay per view, movies on demand, channel guide, etc). This may be available at some point in the future with CableCard 2.0 but it won't be backward compatible and very murky as to when 2.0 will arrive and what features will really work.
yzfmik
17 years ago
Get a DVR cable box. A DVR is the only way you can record HD. I have heard that cable cards have some issues that still need to be worked out. I know a few people that work for the local cable company (Brighthouse), and they advised to stay away from cable cards.
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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???
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Comments (3)
The truth is that most cable companies including comcast are moving away from analog and clear QAM signals. So even if your TV has ATSC tuner there are few or no unencrypted channels available. You will need a box to "decode" the encrypted digital signal. In my local area comcast offers a "free" (for 3 tv's) tuner that outputs a wretched analog via channel three signal over coax signal. Think back to VHS quality days. For about $10 - $15 per box per month you can get a HD box that outputs a variety of digital and HD signals. The only other option is called Cable Card, a cable card is a small card that allows the decryption of the cable co's signal. Few if any TV's now have cable card slots (unfortunate!). There are cable card devices out there and your cable co is required by law to support them. Some examples of cable card tuners are Tivo Premiere, Moxi DVR, Computer based cable card tuners (Silicon Dust, Ceton, and ATI). This option allows you to own the tuner and rent for small fee the cable card. The cable co. wants you to have a box on every tv, it gives them control and allows them to up-charge for HDTV. There are a few options for "sharing" boxes between tv's but none that are compelling nor do they work well. Some of the sat companies boxes are designed to be shared to multiple tv's.
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robdam
Original Author
17 years ago
Can DVR Cable Boxes record shows on the fly or scheduled like TiVo?
mike1117
17 years ago
DVR boxes work great. You can record shows on the fly or schedule shows to record just like TiVo. You can watch one thing and record another. Plus it gives you Picture-In-Picture.
dssxxxx
17 years ago
Cable Card gives a superior picture to the cable box. Have 4 LCD's with cable card and three are connected to Tivo. Only downside is recording HD. But with digital cable everything looks great on the Tivo.
yzfmik
17 years ago
Superior? I highly doubt that. My picture on my SXRD is flawless through the DVR box. Cable cards have no guide and no recording capability, so I don't see any advantage.
mike1117
17 years ago
Like I said before... technically you get a better connection with your cable going direct to the tv with the cablecard instead of through the cable box. Reality is you will most likely never notice the difference.
ttugrad95
17 years ago
Why not get the one with the cable card capability so you have that option? I don't know a lot about cable card as Comcast doesn't yet offer it in my area but a great deal. I guess we have all gotten used to having some kind of external tuner whether it be a cable box, satellite, HDTV tuner, or Tivo that we all forgot what it was like to actually change channels from our TV. Remember how mad we were when we had to start using the cable boxes and gained yet another remote? The fancy remote we got witht he TV became useless for all but the volume. Anyway, I just believe in future upgradability and cable card seems to be that.
uholmes
17 years ago
dssxxxx is correct. The cable card DOES give you a better picture. Hard to believe..but I ditched my CC and went back to the digital cable box (component connection) and noticed an immediate difference. I can't say I noticed it on HD channels, only on SD. I didn't have time to compare the DVI/HDMI signal versus the CC.

The reason I ditched the CC was because the built-in TV Guide on my DLP is not 100% reliable. I hated not knowing which channel was which. After looking on several forums, it seems the TV Guide implementation is severly flawed and I wasn't alone.
Jolly__Roger
17 years ago
Cable Card is nice when you wall mount a big LCD and don't want a cable box or have any desire for on-demand programming.
No equipment rental fee either.
bronxbill
15 years ago
Hi everyone: Kinda new and enjoying - getting an education.
what is a cable card?
what are the abbrvs. YMMV & OTOH stand for? seen them on some of the respones on this forum.
Thanks much.

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