TIVO HD question

Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.
Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is
a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course. What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I
think.
Are the cards tuners or do they serve the function of an STB? More
questions - where is channel selection performed? Whay do we need more
than channel 3 on the TV anyway?
Sorry, this message just grew like Topsy.

Jim T. shaped the electrons to say:
Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.

Well, that's a bad answer then - the correct answer is "it depends".

Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is

Well, they're not required by law. You can sell a 'TV' which is
really just a display with NO tuner at all. And those are on the
market, they're not really televisions, but they look like them and
act like them (save for the tuner) and are generally sold alongside
them. So most users don't realize they aren't. The law is that any
TV with an analog NTSC tuner must also have a digital ATSC tuner.

a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course. What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I

This is there 'it depends' comes in.

Analog cable is pretty much the same as analog NTSC OTA broadcasts.
And for years now pretty much any device with an analog tuner has been
'cable ready', capable of tuning analog cable. The same is not true
of digital broadcasts.

OTA digital in the US is ATSC, which uses 8VSB signalling. So you
need an 8VSB tuner for ATSC. Digital cable in the US is almost always
QAM (QAM64 or QAM256), which is a different signalling system. So for
digital cable you need a QAM tuner. And for any encrypted digital
cable channels you need CableCARD.

There are sets with ATSC-only digital tuners, no digital cable
support. There are sets with ATSC and Clear QAM - unencrypted digital
cable only. And there are sets with ATSC and CableCARD - supports
encrypted digital cable.

So what you can tune depends on the tuner support in the set. If it
only does analog, then you could tune any analog cable channels you
have, or NTSC until next February. If it is ATSC you have analog or
OTA ATSC, Clear QAM gets you analog and any unencrypted channels,
usually at least your locals. And a CableCARD set, with a CableCARD
from your cable MSO, gets you all of your digital channels. (Modulo
SDV, which is another can of worms...)

Are the cards tuners or do they serve the function of an STB?

Neither. CableCARDs are authentication and authorization tokens. The
tuner is built into the host device (like the TiVo or TV) and the
CableCARD enables that tuner to access the encrypted digital cable
channels.

More questions - where is channel selection performed?

In the tuner - either the tuner in the TiVo or the tuner built into
the TV, or any other tuner you have, like a cable box.

Whay do we need more than channel 3 on the TV anyway? Sorry, this

Few people are still using RF to connect an STB to their TV, unless it
is an OLD TV. It is the worst possible connection. In the old days
we'd use channel 3 (or 2 or 4, depending on the device) because TV's
only had RF input and that was how you had to modulate content to get
it into the set.

These days people tend to use the A/V connections - HDMI, component
video, S-Video, or composite video - as they're higher quality.

If you want to tune that third channel to watch live on the TV, then
you need the tuner in the TV, and that means tuning your channel of
choice, not just 3.

-MZ
--
megazone-at-megazone.org http://www.MegaZone.org/ Gweep, Geek, Human, me.
http://www.GizmoLovers.com/ http://www.Eyrie-Productions.com/ -- Hail Eris
"A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-852-2171

On 2008-09-02, Jim T wrote:
Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.
Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is

Generally speaking, any HD channels carried by cable are encrypted.

That's what the big deal is about cablecard support.

Stuff isn't being spat out the coax like it used to. This is
true for the cable box and the line coming into your house. This
whole "effort to eliminate the need for a Set Top Box" effort with
the industry and the FCC has pretty much made one entirely mandatory
now.

a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course. What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I
think.
Are the cards tuners or do they serve the function of an STB? More
questions - where is channel selection performed? Whay do we need more
than channel 3 on the TV anyway?
Sorry, this message just grew like Topsy.


--
Apple: Because a large harddrive is for power users.
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Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usenet.com

Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.
Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is

Older TVs are not required by law to have digital tuners. I'm not
sure that there is anything illegal about a TV (also called "monitor"
in this case) currently being sold with 4 inputs for HDMI, component,
S-Video, and composite (with no NTSC or ATSC tuner at all).

Some kind of tuner isn't good enough. It needs a digital tuner,
and the original situation being asked about was after the digital
transition, using an existing TV. And if you do this, you don't
get to pause live TV or use other Tivo features on that show.

For an over-the-air setup, run the antenna cable into a splitter,
and connect the two outputs to the antenna inputs of the TV and the
Tivo, respectively. You can then watch another show live even if
someone STEALS your Tivo.

a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course.

The channels aren't limited for an over-the-air setup, unless you're
dealing with scrambled over-the-air channels.

What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I
think.
Are the cards tuners or do they serve the function of an STB? More
questions - where is channel selection performed? Whay do we need more
than channel 3 on the TV anyway?

With reasonably modern, but not necessarily digital, TV sets, you
need INPUT 1, INPUT 2, and INPUT 3, and have no use for analog
channel 3 as the video quality from (if digital: HDMI, or DVI),
component, S-Video, or composite coming from a DVR is much better
than RF-modulated analog signals on channel 3.

On Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:09:15 -0400, Jim T.
wrote:

Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.

Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is
a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course. What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I
think.

Well the answer to that question would depend heavily on what kind of
TV your TiVo is hooked up to and how it's hooked up. For example, my
TV is hooked up to its TiVo through HD composite connectors. That
leaves its coax connector free to be hooked up through an antenna.
This allows me to do exactly what you are talking about, recording
three shows while watching a third. It can also be used as a monitor
for my Mac Mini but that's another story.
--
Cause, really, nothing says "I'm a counter culture
rebel, fighting the establishment" like an Aibo on
a skateboard.
- Seen on Slashdot

Roberto Castillo

http://mind-grapes.blogspot.com/
http://zombie-gulch.myminicity.com/

"Zombie Elvis" wrote in message
...
Well the answer to that question would depend heavily on what kind of
TV your TiVo is hooked up to and how it's hooked up. For example, my
TV is hooked up to its TiVo through HD composite connectors.

Correction, that would be the COMPONENT connectors. Composite is old NTSC
video and not High-Def. Technically they both use RCA style physical
connectors. But component and composite are entirely different things.

"Jim T." wrote in message
...
Some time ago I asked if you could record two shows and watch another
live. The universal answer was NO.
Being stubborn, I still wonder - if the TV set has some kind of tuner,
as required now by law, why couldn't you do this? I assume that it is
a digital tuner so no converter would be required. The channels you
could get would be limited of course. What kind of connection to the
cable would be required? Heck - some TVs with PIP have two tuners, I
think.

This would work but only if certain factors exist. If your cable service
has clear channels on the wire then the TV could likely tune them without
anything else. If they're encoded then you'd need to have a CableCard in
the TV itself. Not all TVs have the ability to use a CableCard, and given
the emergence of dual tuner DVRs it's pretty useless to have a CableCard in
the set.

Few TVs with the PIP feature actually have two live RF tuners. Worse yet,
many TV PIP features do not work well in all modes. As in, you can't always
use one type of input with others.

At the end of the day, the fascination with recording and watching a
bajillion things simultaneously eventually wears off. Since most material
is broadcast more than once within a given number of days there's always a
chance to record it at a later time. A bit of clever rearranging with
season passes, or doing keyword searches, often takes care of it. Yes,
sporting events generally won't be rebroadcast in that manner, nor will some
network broadcast TV programs. There's always the option to add more DVRs
to handle it.

But here you have to ask yourself, just how eff'ing much of this garbage
really needs recording anyway, let alone watching?