Comcast is "upgrading" my neighborhood to replace most of the SD analog channels with digital variants, thus opening up more spectrum on the cable for more channels. I had an unhelpful phone call with the Comcast customer service agent, leaving me unclear on some of the particulars. Time to ask the Best and Brightest.

We have three TV sets in the house. One has a TiVo with a CableCard. The other two are just plugged directly into the raw cable. The latter two TVs pick up the analog channels and a damn near useless subset of the digital ones. (It annoys me that the local OTA HD channels aren't available in the clear on my cable.) Since those TVs are only used occasionally, I'm uninterested in spending $8.50/month (per TV) for HD converter boxes.

In the new world order, I fear that _all_ the new digital channels will be encrypted. Comcast has helpfully, and for free, offered to ship me two "digital adapters", which (I believe) don't have digital output and don't do high-def. That's lame. I want an alternative.

Way back when, my dad bought two Sharp LCD TVs that had built-in CableCard slots. Great concept. Recently, he actually tried to set one up that way, after his cable went from analog to digital, and it turns out that the TV only ever knew how to deal with S-cards, and Comcast only now offers M-cards. And, so far as I can tell, there's no such thing as a current HDTV set that has a built-in CableCard slot.

Ideally, I'd like to buy a cheap CableCard-compatible tuner, stick it next to each TV, and get Comcast to give me some extra CableCards (which, I hope, are cheaper than $8.50/mo.).

The closest I've been able to find is a HDHomeRun Prime box (for $200), which then dumps TV signals onto my LAN. One of the two aforementioned TVs has an Xbox 360 on it, so that could (allegedly) display the video coming out of the HDHomeRun Prime, although I hate to have that thing on for TV watching since the fan makes such a racket. And then, for the other TV, I'd have to buy some other sort of Media Center Extender. Since I don't have a Windows 7 Media Center (nor particularly want to buy one), this just doesn't seem like the right way to go. (If there was a sub $100 box that could act like a set-top box and connect to the HDHomeRun, that might be attractive.)

The other alternative, which might actually be the right answer, is to stick an old-fashioned antenna on the roof (can't do it in the attic since we have a radiant barrier), and route that to the two TVs in question. That would mean that we'd only have OTA, but it would be HD and it wouldn't require set-top boxes or monthly fees.

My true "dream" alternative would be the TiVo Premiere Q / Preview combo, but those are only offered through RCN.

So... am I missing any options?

Boy, all that is 'way over my head! I grew up in the era when TV setup meant you faced the rabbit ears toward the window to pick up channel 2, and turned them to the side for channel 11. That's all the setup (and channels!) there was.

tanstaafl.

The "digital adapters" Comcast offered you are known as a Digital Transport Adapter (DTA) and are the most basic addressable cable converter you could possibly make. I have some limited experience with them, but what I think I know is this:

• The FCC mandates that once analog service is shut off, the cable operator must provide you with up to 3 DTAs at no charge.
• The boxes currently don't have HD output because there is a grey area about how the law is written. If the box did have an HD or HDMI output, it might not fit into the description of a DTA.

As for the S-card slot in your Dad's Sharp, it should still be able to take any Cablecard. M-cards have to be backward compatible with S-card devices. But, you are correct when you state it's hard to find a TV with Cablecard slot these days. I rent an M-card and it costs $2/month.

I have an Xbox 360 in by bedroom that connects to my Windows 7 Media Center machine. I don't believe you could use an Xbox to do what you want to do (stream TV without a Windows 7 Media Center in the mix).

Ceton showed off their 6-tuner Cablecard DVR based on Windows 7 Embedded at CES. More interesting, however, was their companion media extender that would take the place of the Xbox 360 in your scenario. It looks really small and is, most importantly, fanless.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/10/ceton-announces-multi-room-dvr-and-echo-extender-hands-on/

He got one. He tried to make it work. It failed. I tried. It still failed. According to Google, we found many people complaining that it wouldn't work with M-cards. This set is circa 2006 or thereabouts, so it's not like there's an update coming from Sharp.

Anyway, it's just sad that CableCard failed in the market. They used to build it into TVs, but no longer.

If this helps, I bit the bullet and replaced my 360 with one of the newest models, specifically because of the fan noise issue. I'm quite happy with the amount of fan noise on the new model; now I can hear myself think when I'm playing a game. I still don't use the 360 for media playing though, since the PS3 has been better at that task historically. I haven't really tried the 360 for media playing since the recent UI upgrade which included a bunch of media enhancements.

It's ok, if you don't mind this:

*power on noise and delay* *move around UI to get to media... "CHUCK NORRIS PLAYS WARCRAFT" *continue going through UI to get to media.*

The new interface and even deeper ad integration, along with auto playing sound if you move over an ad element just to get to the next page pretty much was my final straw with the 360 for anything.

You know, one thing that bugs me about the 360 and the PS3 with regard to media playing is their insistence that each media player must be an app which requires a confirmation to exit.

On the 360, it lets me slide into the media player app as if it were part of the main menu structure, but God forbid I'd want to back out again in the same way. Instead, I must answer a prompt "do you want to exit Zune?".

On the PS3, in order to exit the Netflix or DVD players, I must perform a similar step.

Why? What data loss am I risking if I exit these player apps? Why is there a prompt?

Well, it's nice to know I'm not alone. Jamie Zawinski has a great rant on a related topic (trying to spend less money on DirecTV and being unhappy with their evil practices).

DirecTV pissed me off so much with some of the things they did that I scheduled Dish to be installed before even talking to DirecTV about canceling. It ended up degrading into such a bad experience (it started out great, but that was a long time ago) that even though they were offering me a huge discount (I think it was like $100 off each month for 6 months), it wasn't worth it. Now I am paying less per month WITH the NHL Center Ice payment than I was to DirecTV without it.

My list of problems included:

• having a shitty HD receiver (but the artifacts could be fixed by rebooting the system, so they wouldn't send a tech)
• being charged for receivers I deactivated years ago
• billing discrepancies (getting charged for the DVR when it should've been free with the package)
• generally horrible customer service related to the above issues
• price increases
• having a dispute with a channel I wanted and me missing the first game of the season because of it

I've been doing fine with just a DB4 HDTV antenna in my attic and another one to pick up the VHF stations on my mantle (DB4 is not good with VHF). I can pick up 12 stations this way. I use Netflix and Youtube for the the rest of my viewing. Beat's paying $100/month for cable.

I pay about $45 a month for cable, and haven't turned my TV set on in months. Don't even know if it still works.

All I have it for is the cable modem for internet. Interestingly, they will sell me just the internet service without the television... for about 50% more than the TV + Internet package.

Go figure!

tanstaafl.