[nick_charles]

Our old analog telly is dying and we will have to replace it. The missus wants a 46 inch LG HDTV. Obviously to get HD cable we will need to upgrade our cable box which is non-HD , digital in but SD RF analog out to a 12 year old Toshiba. Probably a stupid question but do new HDTVs even allow an analog cable input over RF or will we need to chnage the box before we can watch any cable TV signal ?

 

[ericj]

If the HD set has an RF tuner that will do NTSC, then yes it will work, but that cable box is a rental isn't it? Why not replace it on principle?
 
Edit: If by some chance you have a UHF antenna around, over-the-air HD (for the channels you can get over the air) has superior bandwidth and picture as compared to digital cable.

 

[blackbird]

It might be important to notice that there are no special "HD" antennas. An antenna is an antenna. Yes, that 60yr old antenna on the roof will get the new HD signals. It is the TV that decides whether or not it can be decoded.

 

[ericj]

 
Quote:

It might be important to notice that there are no special "HD" antennas. An antenna is an antenna. Yes, that 60yr old antenna on the roof will get the new HD signals. It is the TV that decides whether or not it can be decoded.

Yeah, but the majority of HD signals in the USA are on the UHF band, and if your antenna has only elements tuned for VHF signals, you might get lousy reception.
 
The UHF elements are the shorter ones, fwiw.
 
Some examples of cheap, adequate UHF antennae:
 
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=uhf+antenna&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=1280&bih=662&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=15293263938029871280&ei=aKroTM-qLZbtnQe0zvidDQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CIUBEPMCMAU4FA#
 
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=uhf+antenna&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=1280&bih=662&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=7303340810626461523&ei=aKroTM-qLZbtnQe0zvidDQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CI4BEPMCMAc4FA#
 
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=uhf+antenna&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&biw=1280&bih=662&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=2327228777292791152&ei=BqvoTNPAAoifnQfZydDFDQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CHAQ8wIwAThG#
 
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103088
 
The last one - the radioshack one - was $12 cheaper 5 years ago (I used to have one, gave it to my brother - it's currently nestled into the blown-in insulation in his attic crawlspace and working like a champ). But i listed it here as an example - if your existing "big contraption on the roof" has some elements that look like the last two here, you're good to go. If it doesn't, well, try it - if you're close to the transmitter you could be ok. If you're far away, the little indoor one could even work just fine.

 

[Moontan13]

Quote:

Our old analog telly is dying and we will have to replace it. The missus wants a 46 inch LG HDTV. Obviously to get HD cable we will need to upgrade our cable box which is non-HD , digital in but SD RF analog out to a 12 year old Toshiba. Probably a stupid question but do new HDTVs even allow an analog cable input over RF or will we need to chnage the box before we can watch any cable TV signal ?

I suppose they add some tuner functions to allow for it.
It's best to check the TV specs for input modes. MY HD Vizio bought early this year has inputs for coaxial cable and HDMI with almost everything in between including AGP. There is no DVI connection (use an adapter for DVI-HDMI) or a direct antenna input (again, use an adapter).
What happened to me with HD is that everything else looked like crap by comparison, such that I began to eschew non-HD programming. I found that low def content such as VHS or old video game systems look worse on a big LCD than on a CRT TV. YMMV, but plan on upgrading your cable service and getting a Blu-Ray player to get the most out of your HDTV.
 

 

[ericj]

 
Quote:

What happened to me with HD is that everything else looked like crap by comparison, such that I began to eschew non-HD programming. I found that low def content such as VHS or old video game systems look worse on a big LCD than on a CRT TV. YMMV, but plan on upgrading your cable service and getting a Blu-Ray player to get the most out of your HDTV.
 

 
Inserting a Faroudja or Reon processor into the mix can fix that. It's due to the way that the old analog systems were inherently blurry and the new digital systems are inherently not blurry - and usually make only minimal effort to smoothly scale the video.
 
With the Faroudja processor in my TX-SR707, VHS looks no worse on my 47" 16x9 1080P LCD than it did on my 34" 4x3 NTSC tube.
 
One weird thing i noticed - on wii games that use the mii characters, the scenery and game bits are nicely smoothed but the mii still has jaggy edges. Nintendo really needs to release at least a 720P version of the Wii. With backward compatibility of course.

 

[ForgottenxxRebel]

Quote:

Probably a stupid question but do new HDTVs even allow an analog cable input over RF or will we need to chnage the box before we can watch any cable TV signal ?

no, you don't have to change the box.   most tvs have rf inputs so you can also connect vcrs, old video game systems, etc.   i'd be surprised if a tv didn't have a rf input and cable tv tuner, since you can still get cable tv service without a box.

 

[nick_charles]

Thanks for all the replies, the Telly we are after does have an NTSC tuner , and we will probably get a decent roof antenna in due course, our provider ComCast is renowned for its compression of high def signals and we are right at the end of a loop on an old ex-Adelphia trunk with a marginal signal so this might be an er entertaining switch over. We will swap the box out.
 
There's never anything on anyway

 

 

[ericj]

 
Quote:

Quote:

Probably a stupid question but do new HDTVs even allow an analog cable input over RF or will we need to chnage the box before we can watch any cable TV signal ?

no, you don't have to change the box.   most tvs have rf inputs so you can also connect vcrs, old video game systems, etc.   i'd be surprised if a tv didn't have a rf input and cable tv tuner, since you can still get cable tv service without a box.

Generally if it has no tuner, they call it a "monitor". That's a dead giveaway.
 
It's possible but improbable that models are showing up with ATSC and no NTSC. AFAIK most of the available tuner modules and chips do both by default, so there probably is no economic reason to remove NTSC compatibility. And there are still analog NTSC stations - mostly in rural areas, and in smaller nations like Pulau that use NTSC-US video.
 
(During my digital video days, we had an interesting day when we discovered that not only had our webmonkey given our website the ability to sell stuff, but it had sold stuff, and not only had it sold a bunch of stuff, it had sold a bunch of stuff to a tv studio in Pulau. And not only sold a bunch of stuff to a tv studio in Pulau, we had already deposited the funds, and probably spent that money as well. Most of our customers were either startups or fortune 500 companies, and we couldn't initially figure out if our gear would even be useful there. It turns out that Pulau uses NTSC-US. Our closest guess was NTSC-J)