Finally got a new TV!! (1 Viewer)

[Jason_M]

Well after weeks and weeks of trying to decide on what TV to get I finally made a decision. I went with the Sony KDF50WE655 lcd projection. All I can say is WOW!! I am loving it. I have a couple questions regarding HD though. I have Dish Network hooked up right now and I am have cable internet as well. While hooking up my all my components to the new tv I thought to myself I'll check to see if somehow I have cable tv as well. Come to find out I do. Apparently the cable company didn't put a filter on to filter out the frequency for tv channels. So I start the auto program and it picks up 77 analog channels and 243 digital channels. Almost all of them are digital audio channels but some are actual HD (atleast I think). When I put on the HD channels in the info display up top it says 1080i 16:9, thats HD right? I have Discovery HD theater, ESPN HD, Universal HD (never heard of that one), a local NBC that does HD at times, and a local ABC that does some HD. These channels are absolutely amazing in picture quality. My wife and I were watching Law & Order: SVU on the NBC HD channel and we were blown away that we could see stray hairs on the guys head that were out of place. I tried a Terk TV55 to pick up local HD OTA channels but didn't have much luck. So I am returning the antenna but I am just amazed that I am getting the free cable and HD on top of that. I asked the cable company about 4 months ago about if I had the internet if I were going to get cable as well and they said no it would be more money so I guess what they don't know won't hurt them. So my question is if it says 1080i and 16:9 is it HD then? A game on ESPN HD was 720p 16:9 as well.

 

[WilliamPC]

U have HD if you are viewing at those resolutions. Cool to get them for free but I would suspect that it will not last long as the tend to discover these eventually. Happy HD viewing!!!

 

[LaMarcus]

I don't see how your getting the HD channels without a digital cable box hooked up to your tv via component or dvi cables. If you just took the coax cable from the wall to your tv then it's impossible to be viewing HD channels. The OTA channels you would only be able to watch those with a antenna if your tv have a HD tuner built inside.

How do you have the cable hooked up to the tv?

 

[Jeff Gatie]

LaMarcus, that Sony has a digital cable ready tuner (QAM) with a CableCARD slot. This is a new type of tuner that makes the tv "digital cable ready" for HD signals and also allows the owner to insert a CableCARD from the cable company to unscramble any premium channels, all without a set top box.. So he probably is able to tune digital cable and HD signals from his internet cable hookup. May not be there for long, because those tuners can be interactive, depending on how advanced the cable's head end is.

 

[LaMarcus]

Ya know, when he said he was getting the analog and digital channels it set me aside right there I I new something was up. You actually answered another question I was pondering like " what the hell is 'cable ready', aren't all tv's ready for cable?", but now I see what they're talking about. That's pretty sweet, long as you don't care about using the guide or info.

Still can't believe he's getting the hd channels with that, the hd channels are actually subscriber channels they cost $6 extra dollars. And if his tv does all that, you'd think it has an internal tuner for OTA signals too. Strange.....

 

[Jeff Gatie]

It does, he is just not getting a strong enough signal through the Terk antenna.

 

[Jason_M]

It does have a HD tuner built in but I tried the Terk antenna inside the house and got nothing. I am going to try it outside as well before I return it. I work at Circuit City in the warehouse and I go on deliveries as well and no matter how many times I see a HD signal at work it never really struck me as looking great because all the tv's had the same signal. But when I got it home and could compare it to my other tvs, it really hit home. Man it looks awesome!!

 

[LaMarcus]

Nice answers Jeff....what are you his lawyer? Naw just kiddin, thanks for the answers though I did really want to know.

That's pretty sweet. The Time Warner cable here are some sneaky (but smart) bastards. You get your local and discovery HD free, but HDNET,HDmovies,INHD,INHD2,& ESPN HD, cost an extra $6. Now which of those 5 channels just doesn't seem to fit? They knew exactly what they were doing. Those channels, 9 times out of 10 are showing some bull$hit that you don't want to see, and a lot of people were cancelling it (including myself). So what do they do to keep people subscribing to those crap channels?.........They put ESPN HD with it!!!!!! Those dirty sons-of..

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Even with the cable card the communication is one-way only (you can't order PPV on cablecard sets) so chances are the cable company will never find out he's getting cable.

I have DirecTv and a Sony HD-200 DirecTv box that tunes local ota analog and digital off antenna. I finally got a decent antenna and my reception from that blew cable away so I cancelled cable alltogether, went down to the local cable office and turned in my old unused analog cable box. The guy came out a week or so later and "disconnected" the cable and I got a partial refund check from the cable company for the unused portion of the month after the "shutoff". A couple of weeks later I turned on the set in the bedroom which I use almost exclusively to watch movies on dvd and accidentally switched it to the antenna input--there were all the cable channels I always got before, so apparently the shutoff was unsuccesful. Since the cable's plugged directly into a nearly 20 year old Sony tv, I doubt if the cable company will ever find out.

Terk is the Bose of the antenna world, btw.

 

[LaMarcus]

Funny.

Not to get off subject but, the expression on peoples face when I tell them that Bose is the worst is classic. I may be ruining my credibility with them when I say that. I think they name drop Bose in a audio conversation with me to see how much I'll say Bose is the best, but when I say Bose sucks, they're shocked in horror.

 

[Jason_M]

Well I took back the Terk TV55 and got the Terk TV3 and it actually picked up 2 HD channels but not really strong enough. They kept going out. I may return it and just wait until this summer when it is nice enough to mount one on the roof.