HDTV set up?

Question

Part 1: Does digital cable come in from the regular cable wire, and only becomes digital programs when it's run through the special cable box from the cable company? Part 2: If I have standard cable and buy a digitial cable box, will I get digital programs?

Answer 1

1] Yes, DIGITAL Cable signals are always present on the Cable line.....they send a signal to your Cable Box to DESCRAMBLE the digital stations, much like they can turn on and off HBO, Showtime, Pay per View and HD stations.....

2] IF you get a DIGITAL box, you must contact the Cable provider to send the codes to descramble your box.....Don't think that you can go out and get ANY box from ANYBODY....Those boxes are the PROPERTY of your Cable provider, and selling or swapping boxes can get you into trouble.

Answer 2

Short answer:
Part 1: Yes.
Part 2: No.

There are two types of cable TV -- analog and digital.

With analog cable, the same channels are used as regular over-the-air TV, plus some extra channels that only cable uses. The content is all analog, so it can be displayed by any standard analog TV tuner (at least in any TV in the last 20 years or so). No cable box is required unless you're getting premium content (like HBO), or using advanced features like PayPerView.

In digital cable, each channel's analog content is digitized, compressed and sometimes encrypted (for premium channels), so that it requires far less bandwidth than an analog signal. This lets cable providers support hundreds of channels. But it also requires you to have a digital cable set-top box to decrypt, decompress and convert the signals back to an analog version that the TV "understands".

Answer 3

Yes & Yes.

You need the receiver set-top box to get digital cable and it will use the cable that is already in your house.