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Thread: Digital cable questions

  1. #1
    Indifferent to bacon Julie's avatar
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    Default Digital cable questions

    I currently have Time Warner standard cable. I'm kinda curious about switching to digital cable (mostly out of interest in Extra Innings), but there are things I don't know.

    Does digital cable always require a box? Can it work with my beloved TiVos? Will new cable have to be installed in Casa Julie?

    Is it a good buy?

    Any info or opinions would be super.

  2. #2
    Elephant
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    If your wiring and/or any splitters are particularly old (like, from the 80's), they'll probably have to be replaced to handle the higher frequencies that modern cable systems use. If you basically have one cable outlet and no splitters, or if the splitters are somewhere accessible, you're probably in good shape.

    You'll definitely need some kind of digital tuner. This is the role the cable box serves, but there is a new standard called "cable card" which sort of tidies this up: if your cable company offers this (and many do these days), you tell them you want a cable card instead of a cable box. This is a little device that's somewhat reminiscent of the cards that slide in the side of laptops, and it has a connector for the cable to plug into it. Newer TVs and some Tivos have a slot that you shove this card in and then the software on the TV or Tivo gets access to all the channels on the cable signal. It's like a beautiful dream.

    Unfortunately, if you already have a Tivo, it's unlikely to be cablecard-capable unless you splurged and got a deluxe model with features you didn't necessarily need at the time. So you're stuck with a cable box. That can be made to work with the Tivo, but it's sort of a nasty hack: you configure your Tivo so that it knows there's a cable box, and when it wants to record something on channel 123, it actually makes a few little bursts of infrared light that makes the cable box think someone actually punched "123<enter>" on the remote control. There are problems with this approach (like it's possible for the lighting situation to interfere and make it miss button presses, so instead of recording channel 123 it records channel 13), but I think it's pretty common for it to work just fine. What you need to make this work is an "IR Blaster." There was probably one in the box with your Tivo, but they're pretty cheap if you lost it. It's basically an LED on a wire that plugs into a jack on the back of your Tivo, and you position the LED somewhere just in front of the IR receiver on the cable box.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    Quote Originally posted by McNutty
    Unfortunately, if you already have a Tivo, it's unlikely to be cablecard-capable unless you splurged and got a deluxe model with features you didn't necessarily need at the time. So you're stuck with a cable box. That can be made to work with the Tivo, but it's sort of a nasty hack: you configure your Tivo so that it knows there's a cable box, and when it wants to record something on channel 123, it actually makes a few little bursts of infrared light that makes the cable box think someone actually punched "123<enter>" on the remote control. There are problems with this approach (like it's possible for the lighting situation to interfere and make it miss button presses, so instead of recording channel 123 it records channel 13), but I think it's pretty common for it to work just fine. What you need to make this work is an "IR Blaster." There was probably one in the box with your Tivo, but they're pretty cheap if you lost it. It's basically an LED on a wire that plugs into a jack on the back of your Tivo, and you position the LED somewhere just in front of the IR receiver on the cable box.
    Some cable boxes (including mine) have a jack on the back that looks like a serial port. Instead of using an IR blaster, you connect a cable to that, and the Tivo sends the channel-change signals through the wire instead of through the air. This part doesn't make sense to me: it still doesn't always change properly on the first try. But I guess the cable box sends feedback to the Tivo about what channel it's on, because it re-tries until it works; you can't do that with an IR blaster.
    If I didn't have Tivo, I would have kept analog cable, because digital takes a few seconds for each channel change. With Tivo, those changes are easily ignored, at the start of each recording. I might switch back to analog anyway, for budget reasons.

  4. #4
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    Quote Originally posted by McNutty
    You'll definitely need some kind of digital tuner. This is the role the cable box serves, but there is a new standard called "cable card" which sort of tidies this up: if your cable company offers this (and many do these days), you tell them you want a cable card instead of a cable box. This is a little device that's somewhat reminiscent of the cards that slide in the side of laptops, and it has a connector for the cable to plug into it. Newer TVs and some Tivos have a slot that you shove this card in and then the software on the TV or Tivo gets access to all the channels on the cable signal. It's like a beautiful dream.
    Actually, it's called a "CableCARD" and cable operators are required by law to offer them. It's not really "new" either: it was required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but resulting court cases and technology delays have kept them from becoming more mainstream. It's also not "somewhat reminiscent" of a PCMCIA card... it is a PCMCIA card.

    Most cable operators would rather rent you a pricey cable box every month than a CableCARD, so they sometimes make it as difficult as possible to get one. Some require a technician to come out and install it at the customer's expense. Others require you to go to a single location in a city to pick one up (or are conveniently always "out" of them at your local office). Others offer self-installation kits, but it seems like they don't work 90% of the time (so a technician will have to come out and "troubleshoot" it, again at the customer's expense).

    Keep in mind that all CableCARDs are currently limited to one-way functionality. That is, they can send information from the cable company's head-end to your TV, but not from your TV to the head-end. So things like Pay-Per-View, Video On Demand, Start Over, and other features requiring two-way communication don't work.

    If you get one of the things - and they're great once you finally get them working, provided you didn't want PPV, VOD, or SO - be sure that it's a "MS-CableCARD" (or simply "M-CARD"). Older CableCARDs only supported decoding one channel at a time, whereas M-CARDs can do up to six (which is important if you have a multiple tuner DVR).

    Lastly, be advised that some folks call M-CARDs "CableCARD 2.0", even though this is not correct (it's the second physical version of the card, but it still has 1.0 capability). True "CableCard 2.0" cards, which support two-way communication, are vaporware at this point. They've been "just around the corner" for like... 3 years now.

  5. #5
    Elephant
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    "New" is relative. They've only really been available for consumers for a few years, and as you point out, the cable operators have been resisting even after that. The fact that the law has been around since 1996 is pretty irrelevant.

    Sorry about not putting the "CARD" part of the name in caps.

  6. #6
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    Well, it's not "cable card", it's "CableCARD". It's a trademarked term.

  7. #7
    Elephant
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    Thanks for clearing that up.

  8. #8
    Indifferent to bacon Julie's avatar
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    Thanks for the answers.

  9. #9
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    Default Re: Digital cable questions

    I have digital cable. Its pretty good, the picture quality is a lot better.

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