Wide World of Women

I have comcast cable. Am I correct in assuming that I can not receive HDTV without a set top box?

That is correct if you want the HD cable channels. You can, of course, get local HD with an antenna.

Are you wanting to start capping/recording in HD on your computer or just curious about the HD just for viewing?

If you hook up the coax cable from Comcast into your HD set you'll get any unecrypted HD/digital channels they have.

Usually it's only the locals but sometimes you might get ESPN, MTV etc...

If I can record in HD I would cap.

Okay you have two choices then. If you are just mainly capping like news stuff I would go via firewire. Its waaaaaaay cheaper (just the cost of the firewire cable). Now the negative to this is that certain stations are blocked from the source and you will not be able to record those via firewire. But that would be mainly stuff like movie channels, espn I think, and even HSN Of course make sure you have firewire on your computer. Your other option is to get the hauppauge dvr that donkeed has been raving about. Its good stuff. With this option you would run the component cables from the cable box to the hauppauge device. The advantage is that the you can record anything, even stuff blocked. Since the blocked encryption is digital it would effect firewire and hdmi, but not the hauppauge since its component and not pure digital. But you wont be able to tell the difference at all.

If you decide to go via firewire I will need to know the specs on your computer and what model comcast box you have (this can be found on the front somewhere...Motorola then should be some kind of dch or dct with some numbers following). That way I will know if you will be able to do this via firewire then I can send you the software you will need to do this and give you further instructions.

Hopefully if we get you up and running we can expect to see some Laura Ingle HD caps

HDTV...there's many sources. If you have an HDTV with ATSC tuner, the easiest way to answer your question is to just plug the coax cable to the HDTV and scan for channels like BPM said. The locals should be unscrambled if you get them.

For capping, the absolute cheapest option is to buy a HD tuner and an indoor antenna. I recommend $100 Fusion Gold HDTV card and $50 radio shack antenna. If you have cable then you might not even need an antenna since the Fusion Gold card also works with cable QAM which is more reliable than OTA signal anyways. The beauty of OTA is it's free! You won't have to pay any monthly or programming fees the cable company might charge. You might be able to get the QAM HD locals from comcast with the plan you already have so check with them as well.

If you get the box you should be able to grab unflagged channels through firewire like RR said.

Oh, and just a note...most of Laura Ingles appearances aren't HD.

It still looks better than SD for caps so it's still worth it.

Thanks for the info. I'm checking with comcast tomorrow to see what boxes they have. The one I now have doesn't have any outputs except RCA type audio and video and coax

Now note that the cable box I have is an hd dvr and it has the firewire support. Im not sure about the non dvr boxes. Also note that the above suggestion by donkeed, you would not need a cable box, but would need to invest in the tuner card. So you kinda need to weigh the options. Now if you are going to cap like Fox News and CNN and stuff, im not sure if the tuner card this is going to work for you though. However you would get local hd channels.

donkeed does that sound right? I mean he would have to have the box anyways to get the cable hd stations right?

What channels are you looking to cap in HD cody?

The way I noted with the tuner and antenna was for locals only and other unencrypted cable. You won't get channels like ESPN HD, FNC HD unless you have a box or DVR.