i have basic cable no box will it still work when the conversion starts?

Question

I have cable with no box only wire from wall. will it work after the digital conversion. If i buy a new tv with the digital turner built in will that work or do i have to upgrade to digital with box and spend more money

Answer 1

1. Your TV will still work. The cable companies are under order to continue to provide the local Over The Air (OTA) TV in analog form until 2012, or provide converters. They are free to do what they want with the other analog TV, like the Discovery channel.
2. If you buy a new TV, get one with NTSC, ATSC and QAM tuners. With the QAM tuner, you will be able to watch any digital TV (including HDTV) that your cable provider broadcasts unencrypted. This will probably include all of the local OTA digital TV.
3. With the ATSC tuner, you can get the OTA digital TV, including HDTV, provided you are within range of the broadcast antennas.
4. If you want more than the standard OTA TV, you'll probably have to get a cable box.

Answer 2

Short answer:

That depends on your cable company. Only they know what they plan to do.

Long answer:

The 2/17/09 cutoff date is for over the air TV signals only. Cable companies have a lot more flexibility in how they can handle it.

There is no technical reason why cable companies can not convert digital signals to analog cable and leave things the way they are.

However, many cable companies are switching to all digital systems and making basic customers use a cable box to get their analog TV signals.

However, buying a DTV doesn't guaranty that you can keep using a direct connection either. DTVs & HDTVs contain ATSC tuners for over the air signals. Most (but not all) contain a QAM tuner which can tune in the digital signals on some cable systems.

If your DTV has a QAM tuner and your cable system uses non-encyripted QAM, then it works just like it does now.

Also if your DTV has a cable card slot and you can rent a cable card from your cable company, then it would work the same as it does now.