Digital cable TV

[RCtime]

Some cable co's. are going digital. I have the digital adaptor for over the air antenna that works well.
Would there be an adaptor that would plug into the end of the cable where I pug it into my RV. I have 110 outlet there.
Stopped in Bishop Ca. The only cable tv provider has gone digital and my tvs would not work. Would it would work the same as the over air antenna box and need a separate remote to work the channels?
Anyone have one yet? The campground said they had an adaptor but you would have to access the back of the tv.

[rk911]

sch911 wrote:
Any television with a QAM digital tuner should be able to resolve all the non encrypted channels on the cable system. Mostly this will be the local channels along with the basic cable tier of channels. Every new LCD television should have a QAM tuner standard....

all of our TVs in the house have QAM tuners but they will *not* decode *encrypted* digital cable signals. unencrypted, yes.

digital cable has been around for years...it actually preceded the broadcast conversion. digital cable simply enables the cable provider to pack more channels or content into the same bandwidth.

understand that the same law that *required* the broadcast companies to switch to digital from analog also *permitted* the cable companies to encrypt their digital cable signals requiring a set-top box for all TV receivers, analog or digital. our local Comcast system made the switch to encrypted cable several years ago. I was forced to get set-top decoder boxes for all of our analog and digital receivers that did not have one. I needed three...Comcast gave us two at no cost. the third runs $3 p/m.

we've already encountered a few campgrounds/parks whose cable providers have elected to encrypt the cable signal thus requiring a set-top decoder box. which cable channels are encrypted varies from system to system. our local Comcast system encrypts everything but the over-the-air networks, PBS and C-Span. the cable provider at a park in Lancaster county, PA kept most of the basic cable channels in the clear (USA, TNT, etc) but encrypted others such as SyFy. the Lancaster County park had initially received about a dozen or so set-top boxes from their cable provider at no charge but had none when we checked in. most had been issued to their seasonal customers and the remainder had been given to transient customers but not returned. the park manager said the owner was reluctant to spend $ to acquire more boxes or to charge a deposit for the boxes.

knowing that digital cable has been around for a long time when I read the OP's initial post I made an assumption that what he really encountering and was referring to was *encrypted* digital cable and my initial reply was based on that assumption.

[sch911]

RCtime wrote:

sch911 wrote:
Any television with a QAM digital tuner should be able to resolve all the non encrypted channels on the cable system. Mostly this will be the local channels along with the basic cable tier of channels. Every new LCD television should have a QAM tuner standard....

I am talking about my 2002 tvs that came with my coach.
definitely not new.

Fully understood... Time to upgrade!

[RCtime]

sch911 wrote:
Any television with a QAM digital tuner should be able to resolve all the non encrypted channels on the cable system. Mostly this will be the local channels along with the basic cable tier of channels. Every new LCD television should have a QAM tuner standard....

I am talking about my 2002 tvs that came with my coach.
definitely not new.
I would love to replace all my tvs with new. I am not in shape to do it myself, and paying for the cabinetry work etc. would get pretty pricey.
So I will continue with what I got as long as I can.

[sch911]

Any television with a QAM digital tuner should be able to resolve all the non encrypted channels on the cable system. Mostly this will be the local channels along with the basic cable tier of channels. Every new LCD television should have a QAM tuner standard....

[RoyB]

Glad to hear some camp grounds are now finally changing over to high def TV signals.

I am surprised the installed digital TV converter for the OTA would not work for you. It should be already installed at the input cable of each TV SET to get signals from both OTA and CABLE. We have never used one of those digital tv converter boxes...

Since we have HDTV ready TV sets we have to always scan for analog and digital TV signals everytime we hookup at the different cable TV places... Also the TV SET has to be set for ANTENNA when using the OTA signals and set for CABLE when using the cable TV signals.

If it were me I would start replacing my old TVs for the new HDTV units. You will be then utilizing the full high definition experience.

Currently when using the digital TV adapters the received HDTV signals are converter back to "ugh" analog signals so that you can view on your old analog TV unit. Depending what you purchase a 22-inch LCD HDTV VIZIO from WALMART will cost less than $200. These new TV's draw less power and will be less weight and will work on both ANALOG and HIGH DEF modes TV signals.

We threw out all of our old analog TV sets in the landfill a few years ago when the TV systems all changed to digital mode.

We purchased 120VAC type HDTV units and when we need to use them when off the power grid we use a 600WATT PURE SIGN WAVE Inverter setup just for the home entertainment equipment and other small wattage 120VAC appliances we want to use. If you just want to use the HDTV setup you could only use a 300WATT PSW type Inverter. Getting 12VDC HDTV replacements will be more expensive and are harder to locate. Everything running from 120VAC has not been a problem for us.

Roy Ken

[rk911]

RCtime wrote:
Some cable co's. are going digital. I have the digital adaptor for over the air antenna that works well.
Would there be an adaptor that would plug into the end of the cable where I pug it into my RV. I have 110 outlet there.
Stopped in Bishop Ca. The only cable tv provider has gone digital and my tvs would not work. Would it would work the same as the over air antenna box and need a separate remote to work the channels?
Anyone have one yet? The campground said they had an adaptor but you would have to access the back of the tv.

the over-the-air (OTA) digital-to-analog converter box you have will not work on digital cable. and each cable system is different so there is no generic or one-size-fits-all digital cable box. when you run into these situations you'll need a set-top box for that specific cable system.

do you have an installed video selector switch...a box that allows you to select OTA, cable, a VCR/DVD player, etc? if that selector switch has an unused port (maybe marked AUX) you could install a length of RG-6 coax (75-ohm) on that port and use that to connect to a campground's digital cable set-top box when needed. when those situations happen just connect the cable box, push the AUX button on the selector and away you go.

[Bill_Satellite]

The OTA digital to analog converters will not work with cable. You are going to need to use the campgrounds converter box or you are going to need new TV's.
Now, if you already have an OTA converter you already have access to the back of your TV. Take that converter out of the loop and the TV out connection goes to your TV. You just need to find where the Cable connection comes into the coach and connect that to the input of the parks converter box.