Can I combine analog cable and digital antenna feeds together?

Question

My current HDTV has two RF inputs: one for "off-the-air" antenna and the other for cable. Both inputs support either digital or analog signal and the TV has both ATSC and NTSC tuners. I'd like to upgrade to a new HDTV, but have to address the fact that, while it has both a digital and an analog tuner, it has only one RF input. I know I could hook up an A/B switch to manually choose between my rooftop antenna for HDTV and my analog cable feed, but that would be a hassle.

What would happen if I combined the two RF inputs into a common cable -- a reverse splitter if you will -- and fed it into the single RF? Would the TV be able to "uncombine" the signal and see both the OTA digital and analog cable signals separately?

Thanks.

Routing the antenna through the VCR would mean using the VCR internal tuner and it can't receive off-the-air DTV.

@sotires
@link

Thanks for your replies. You're right about the option of connecting the _analog_ via the VCR. I found a new TV that has both air and cable RF inputs, so hopefully the problem will be avoided.

Answer 1

I think combining the two sources would lead to grief. OTA hdtv uses exactly the same frequencies as analog TV. Analog cable just sends these channels down the coax, but it also uses some intermediate and higher frequencies that the OTA TV bands skip These frequencies are used by other apps over-the-air, but that's not a problem, since the signals can't leak out of the coax.

I think you may have misread the suggestion of using the VCR. He said to hook up the ANALOG signal to that, not the hdtv antenna signal.

Answer 2

How about connecting the analog cable into your VCR (if you still have one) and then connecting the VCR to the TV using the AV input?