digital cable, Satellite....confusion (1 Viewer)

[Tom_Price]

Hey, I have digital cable by Charter. I don't understand how exactly it is digital. The receiver (by Motorola) has a Dolby Digital logo on the front of it, but there is no type of digital output on the back of the receiver at all. There is also no video out aside from a standard composite.

My question is how do I get movies broadcast in 5.1 from HBO and the like if I don't have a digital output for that? BTW, what is the difference between satellite and digital cable?

Thanks,
TJ

 

[Jason_Els]

Well TJ,
The short answer is....you can't.
I checked
Charter's Cable Box User and Troubleshooting Guides and there are no digital ouputs on this box. What you see is what you get. The best you can get is stereo.
If you have a digital receiver and/or a TV that can accept S-video I would call Charter and tell them this box is unacceptable. It's the lowest of the low. See if they have a box that has better outputs. This one is no better than your analog except that it gives you digital channels.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

"digital" cable is only digital for channels above 100

Satellitte channels tend to be less compressed (though this may be changing for the worse) but overall the technologies are pretty much the same. Satellite also tends to be cheaper and you have more equipment choices

 

[Jason_Els]

Not exactly true. Digital channels can exist on any channel number a cable company decides to assign them. All channels a subscriber receives on a digital cable system are received as digital regardless if the original signal is digital or analog.

 

[dave_brogli]

"All channels a subscriber receives on a digital cable system are received as digital regardless if the original signal is digital or analog

We have Charter up north here, and I used to have that excact motorolla box, before moving to Directv. As I remeber you CANNOT get a S-Vid from these guys. You can see on the motorollla box where there should be a svid but they didnt put it in.
As for the quote above, as far as my cities cable company, they replied (when asked that same question about digital analog channels) "Channels above 100 are "digital Quality" and under 100 is analog... just like your original cable"
Well thats what they told me atleast.

 

[Chris_HD]

I am a Charter Communications customer in Western Massachusetts. When I first ordered digital cable, the settop that was delivered was the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3100. This box has both composite and S-Video output, as well as a coaxial digital audio output. All digital channels that were broadcasting Dolby Digital 5.1 audio were passed through just fine and decoded by my receiver. These were typically channels 100 and above.

I now have Charter High Definition service. The 3100 was replaced by the SI 3100HD. This settop has the same outputs as the 3100 but adds a set of component outputs for high definition. It has a major flaw, where it does not scale or stretch 4:3 material for non-HD programming. Supposedly a new settop will be rolled out in the spring that solves this problem. In the meantime I use two inputs, one for HD, and one for the rest. I send the digital output to the HD input, and the analog ProLogic to the rest. This way I lose digital audio for everything (including digital music channels) except HD.

Any questions let me know.

 

[Ken Chan]

I don't understand how exactly it is digital.

They're taking the signal, which could be either analog or already digital, digitizing or redigitizing it (compressing it further), and sending it over the wire. Your receiver decodes it. They can squeeze more channels on the wire, and the transmission is robust (up to the point where it begins to fail completely), you get what they send, whatever quality it was when it left the office.
Any notion that you would get DVD-quality picture and sound is a misconception the cable company is in no hurry to correct.
//Ken

 

[MikeAlletto]

The receiver (by Motorola) has a Dolby Digital logo on the front of it, but there is no type of digital output on the back of the receiver at all. There is also no video out aside from a standard composite.

My question is how do I get movies broadcast in 5.1 from HBO and the like if I don't have a digital output for that? BTW, what is the difference between satellite and digital cable?

Dolby Digital does not necessarily mean 5.1. The sound is being sent encoded as dolby digital and the box decodes it. But yeah you can't get 5.1 unless you got some type of digital out on it.

I looked into replacing my time warner digital with direct tv. And it ends up being more expensive in the end. I've got 3 tvs. I would need to buy a box for each one, not so with cable. I would have to spend more money just to get the local channels. Not so with digital cable. In the end the programming packages are about the same but when you tack on local channels, multiple boxes, and the dish having to be bought it just wasn't worth it for me.

 

[BruceSpielbauer]

>>> All channels a subscriber receives on a digital cable system are received as digital regardless if the original signal is digital or analog