HDTV (wanna)newbie questions

[zed]

Check out the features of the box your cable co uses. It may be able to down-convert to SD on an s-video or composite output that you can feed into a capture card (PVR150, etc.). Of course, it wouldn't be HD at that point but you'd still have access to the HD shows and the picture quality would probably still be a helluva lot better than the analog cable. I do someting like that for OTA HD using an RCA HDTV receiver.

[madcat]

Check out the features of the box your cable co uses. It may be able to down-convert to SD on an s-video or composite output ...

But isn't that defeting the purpuse? at least to some degree? you'de be down converting and then up converting (assuming HD display, specifically with fixed pixel).

What about sound? I understood HD signals are accompanied (maybe not always, but at least in part) with 5.1 sound. How does this fit into the equation (yes, once again, I guess you could downgrade it to stereo).

[zed]

Well, I guess it depends on the purpose. There isn't any way to record HD off cable but this would at least be a way to record HD material, albeit down-converted to SD and two-channel sound. It's definitely not the best solution but it's one that would work and may be better than nothing. And unless your analog cable is a lot better than mine (Cox), even the down-converted HD picture quality will blow away the analog cable. But unless there's some stuff that you want to see that's available only on HD it's probably not worthwhile. Where I live a couple of the stations broadcast stuff in HD that's not available in their SD signal so it's worthwhile to me. As always, YMMV. I believe that some cable companies and the small-dish satellite outfits offer HD DVRs but they're pretty pricey. And they're not GB-PVR .

[madcat]

Ok, I think I'm getting the idea. Thanks for the informative responses.

I believe that some cable companies and the small-dish satellite outfits offer HD DVRs but they're pretty pricey. And they're not GB-PVR .

Yeah, e.g. local Bell Satelite offers very fancy PVR (Dual Tuner, RF Remote, so you can record one and view something else in other places in the house).
But, like you said. Pricy and not GB...

In any case, this was all theory. I'm still with my analog source. The reason was, that if I want to replace the display (currently Sony 29", want something like a 42" plasma [how original]), then I saw that with analog signal the upconverted picture is sometimes very sad to watch. That's why I started to sniff around the possibilities of going HD.