digital transport adapter

[Clifftall]

My cable co ( comcast ) is requiring after June 21st that all tv's either be hooked up to their receiver ( box ) or a small device called a digital transport adapter ( DTA ). They will provide 3 at no cost. The reason is that they will no longer convert the analogue signal to digital and you need one of these devices to unscramble the signal. Anyone else hear about this? What will happen as we travel from CG to CG and they have different cable co's who have there own version of DTA's?

And by the way, this has nothing to do with your TV. All tv's will require this, digital or not.

[John Hilley]

The DTAs are universal and are the equivalent of the QAM tuners in new digital TVs. You shouldn't have any trouble with other cable companies. On some that are still analog, you just wouldn't use the adapter. Your cable company is fairly generous giving you 3 of them.

[wa8yxm]

Many televisions are digital cable ready.. However there are several digital cable standards. My own TV here in the bedroom understands at least 4 different cable setups. And those are just ANALOG.. (Mine does not do digital)

Find out what digital standard your cable company is using, and if your televisions know that standard, you are good to view.

[Clifftall]

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Hilley The DTAs are universal and are the equivalent of the QAM tuners in new digital TVs. You shouldn't have any trouble with other cable companies. On some that are still analog, you just wouldn't use the adapter. Your cable company is fairly generous giving you 3 of them.

I don't believe this is a converter. This is needed even on digital tv's. It's something new for Comcast subsribers and may be for others as well.

[JimM68]

Our comcast service did this some time ago.
I "messed around" somewhat with my newer TV's, before giving up and putting boxes or DTA's on everything.

The devices straighten out the channel numbers.

My brand new digital TV, without a box, would pick up (for example) NBC 4/3 format on channel 5, and in HD on 5.1, and the nbc weather channel on 5.3, etc.

With the box, NBC 4/3 is channel 5, NBC HD is 188, and NBC weather is in the 200's somewhere.

So, yes, your digital TV will pick up all or most of the digital cable channels, but the numbers will be kinda bizarre. I had some even that had 4 pictures, different channels on the screen. and a couple that had twenty or thirty DOTxxx's.