Do digital box mean the end of using video tapes record programs?

Question

instead of use tapes to record programs.
What are advantages
disadvantages

I am looking at buy a wide screen t.v
I was told it better to buy one with a built in digital box.
(please note I not up with all the names of latest techeclogy. It a bit new to me.)

Thank you both for giving me more information.
And yes I am over 30
You help me with making a wise chose for my big Brithday (nov)Christmas present.
Good luck with votes

Answer 1

A digital box is nothing more a digital receiver for unscrambling digital images to be shown on your TV. About 99.9 percent of all television made now are already digital ready, where you don't need the digital box. The only time you would need a digital Receiver on a Television is if you need to unscramble a pay per view channel. Now if you are referring to a DVR recorder or also known as TIVO, they can record shows directly onto a hard drive in the reciever. All these receivers have outputs on the back, that you can hook up a VHS or DVD recorder to copy one of your recorded shows. There now is DVR recorders that have built in DVD recording capability. This is the way to go but can be costly. I hope this answers your question

Answer 2

I'm not sure who told you this or what they were referring to but i'm going to attemt to answer your question and clarify some things for you. No offense, but I have a feeling you are of the age of thirty or over. Don't take this the wrong way, most people over the age of thirty don't have time in their day to browse around the internet to find out what's new in the way of TVs. The only reason I mention your age is that it will help in my explanation.

If you can recall (age) the inception of Cable Television, everyone needed to have a box for their TV that switched channels for them because their TVs didn't have the capability built in to switch between cable channels for them. The same is happening now with digital television. Up until now, all television was broadcast over the air and over cable lines in an analog form. Now, it is better suited for the stations and the Cable companies to send the signals in a digital format. It ends up with a picture that doesn't degrade as much as it is transmitted. Most all current "widescreen" televisions have the ability to recieve both analog and digital "off the air" broadcasts of television and are capable of picking up analog channels from the Cable company. Only a select few TVs can pick up digital channels from the Cable company (these televisons will have a sticker on them that says "DCR- Digital Cable Ready". This is why your cable company will provide you with a "box" that will switch the channels for you. This is just like the "analog" cable boxes that people had in the 1970s and 1980s but now it's for digital channels. These new boxes offer extra features too.

Keep in mind, none of the above has to do with recording TV shows, just watching them as they are being broadcast.

Now, if you are in to recording television, that is a whole different book; VCR devices themselves also have the ability to tune to the analog television channels from a Cable company or off-the-air. This means that if you have digital cable service, you would not have access to record these channels with your VCR. There are special devices that take place of recording shows to tape. They are called DVRs "digital video recorders" or PVRs "personal video recorders" the names are synonomous. These devices record the program to a hard drive. The show can be watched at any time on this device. The most popular DVR is called TiVo. All "TiVo" is is a brand name of a DVR. Now, most cable companies offer DVR as an integrated feature on their "digital cable boxes" so that you don't need a separate unit and you can record any show, including those on digital channels.

Basically, if you are just replacing an old TV and are happy with your 60-70 channels you get now from your cable company, you don't have to worry about any of this. You can pick up any TV on the market, bring it home, plug it in to the wall and screw in the cable line from your wall and it will work just fine. If you are looking for all of this new-fangled "High-Definition" channels and digital channels and digital recording then you should take your time and figure out what your cable company (or satellite for that matter) has to offer before looking for TVs.