I Have A Question About The Digital Transition

[No_Brains]

i have a question about the digital transition for 2/17/09. my grandparents currently have only basic cable (no cable box) but they have a very old television. will they need one of them converter boxes or not? i tried searching the site for the DTV but really did not understand it! any help is appreciated

thanks and have a great day

 

[gdarwin]

No. Cable will take care of the conversion.

 

[No_Brains]

thanks for the response i appreciate the help. they will happy to hear that

 

[vurbano]

thanks for the response i appreciate the help. they will happy to hear that

they will need either a cable box or a converter that the govt is giving out vouchers for.

 

[n0qcu]

they will need either a cable box or a converter that the govt is giving out vouchers for.

That's wrong...

If they don't need a cable box now they wont need one after.

 

[Andrewwski]

Right.

The converter is absolutely totally useless for cable.

If they don't use a cable box now, things won't change.

Eventually the cable provider may choose to go digital only, in which case you'll need a cable box from the cable company, but that's not anytime soon.

 

[Hall]

they will need either a cable box or a converter that the govt is giving out vouchers for.

One more response saying "wrong". The digital transition only applies to antenna-rec'd television, not cable or satellite customers.

"Button" # 1, "Tell me more about the digital TV transition", says

A TV connected to cable, satellite or other pay TV service does not require a TV converter box from this program.

 

[spiegelj07]

the cable and sat companys handle the conversion on thire end and the sat companys already send it out as a digital signal

 

[Peter Parker]

Cable is not going all digital. In fact cable ops have been asked to keep an analog tier. The Feb date is for OTA NOT cable.

 

[stevenl]

Keeping an "Analog Tier" will benefit cable as those who dont want to buy a box or mess with it will order the cable analog package. If cable is smart they will make their basic package cheaper and make it a "Antenna service" pack and just offer all the locals and maybe a few extras

 

[jessshaun]

Cable is required to offer such a package last I checked. Just ask for something like, "lifeline basic" or something similar, just make sure you say that you only want the locals. You'll get the locals plus maybe a few extras, it usually ranges from $10-$20.

 

[vegassatellite]

The FCC has made it mandatory that cable companies offer locals in an analog format beyond the OTA transition date.

Kinda sucks for the cable companies as they can currently do this by just retransmitting the current analog channels but after the transition they will have to buy commercial ATSC decoders for each local channel, etc.