TW and non-cablecard digital tuners

[feirstein]

I have a Motorola Receiver with a built in digital cable tuner. TW will not activate the unit. :'(Is there anyway to use this tuner on basic digital channels?

Is there any non-cablecard tuner that TW will work with to permit the reception of our local digital channels?

Richard.

[Skaggs]

feirstein said:

I have a Motorola Receiver with a built in digital cable tuner. TW will not activate the unit. :'(Is there anyway to use this tuner on basic digital channels?

I think what you are saying is that you have a QAM capable tuner "built-in" to your Motorola receiver. If that is the case, and you subscribe to "basic" cable, you should be able to receive the locals in HD by just hooking up the coaxial cable to receiver.

Read ebo's post from another thread below:

ebo said:

I have TWC Basic ($12/month). I don't have a cable STB or CableCard, or a subscription to anything other than Basic. I have two receivers that handle clear (unscrambled) QAM: LG LST-3410A and MyHD MDP-130 PCI card. I get the following locals:

WRGB-HD
WTEN-HD
WNYT-HD
WMHT-HD
WXXA-HD

WNYT-SD
WRNN-SD
WRGB Doppler Radar
WTEN Weather Loop

WEWB-HD and WNYA-SD are not available on TWC. Also, WXXA-HD is available only on cable, not OTA, although that should change soon.

I also get several advertising channels, mostly for various On-Demand services. Occasionally I see other channels in the clear, but never anything to get excited about. Lately they include NBA-TV, Discovery Health and Boomerang. The LG can tune Discovery Health but the MyHD cannot. There's no audio on Boomerang on the LG, but it's there on the MyHD. But any of those extra channels may go away at any time.

When I read that Universal HD had been added I looked for it in hopes it wasn't scrambled yet, but no such luck. TWC doesn't even unscramble the premium movie channels like HBO and Showtime during free promotional periods; apparently they just authorize them on all their STBs.

Most of the locals are on two major channels: WRGB-HD, WMHT-HD and WNYT-SD on 104 and WXXA-HD, WNYT-HD and WTEN-HD on 105. Since the MyHD card can optionally record the entire transport stream, I could record simultaneous shows on Fox, NBC and ABC, and choose the show to watch on playback. Same with CBS and PBS, with the SD version of NBC coming along for the ride.