On May 7, 2010 at 11:34, tryptych said...
GREAT THREAD! I needed to learn a bit about qam etc and apparently I came to the right place. Thanks Daniel.
I am getting a new USB tv tuner for my PC. This model has ATSC/NTSC/QAM. This one:
[Link: canadacomputers.com]My question is: when I finally break down and pay Rogers (grrrrr, rogers) for HD service and rent a stupid box from them... will I be able to somehow get HDTV on my PC via my ATSC USB tuner? Something like a cable splitter after their box, one input going into my hdtv and one input into my usb tuner? Would that work? I think the spliter would block the box's signal back to Rogers and theyd cut me off or something? So then what advantage is there for a Canadian to have ATSC on their usb tv tuner? I think I'm still a bit confused... :)
Typically the HD Box will put out a single channel, so while you can split it, you simply get the same channel on both. Often these boxes use a 3 connector cable (left, right, video), a 5 connector cable (left, right, blue, green, red) or HDMI cable. If there is a cable type output, it's only intended for very old TV's that do not have video inputs, I don't think many TV's made in the last 10 years or so, have not had some kind of video input.
ATSC is intended for over the air broadcasts, these can be obtained in major centres quite easily. I currently get 6 channels in HD using ATSC (yeah,
CBC, CTV, RDI, OMNI 1, OMNI 2, CITY) and 3 more analog(NTSC) , TVO, GLOBAL, SUN TV if the weather is clear and it's late I can get GLOBAL and SUN in HD as well. This is off a home built UHF antenna in a basement window. Now I am in the north end of Toronto. If I could get the antenna higher then I would have no problem getting Buffalo as well. Nice thing is, I don't pay Rogers anything.
