Can I Buy My Own HDTV Cable Box Instead of Renting One?

[MrBoylan]

A reader writes in asking if it's possible to purchase his own high definition cable set top box, in order to avoid having to rent one from his local cable company.

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[Garry B]

Hello Chris,

Thanks much for your comprehensive and helpful reply. I certainly no longer have any interest in going the retail route to purchase an HD converter box.

Yes, I have plugged my TV into the raw cable feed and there still are HD broadcasts that I can receive and would be interested in viewing. Which brings me to a follow-up question: What about running a splitter off the raw cable feed, with one split going to the digital converter to loop into the TV as Component 1, and the other split going directly to the TV as Component 2? The idea here being that I would switch to Component 2 to view available HD broadcasts via my TV's built-in QAM tuner. Would this give me my cake and let me eat it too?

Your thoughts, comments once again appreciated.

Thank you!

Garry B.

[MrBoylan]

Hello Chris,

Thanks much for your comprehensive and helpful reply. I certainly no longer have any interest in going the retail route to purchase an HD converter box.

Yes, I have plugged my TV into the raw cable feed and there still are HD broadcasts that I can receive and would be interested in viewing. Which brings me to a follow-up question: What about running a splitter off the raw cable feed, with one split going to the digital converter to loop into the TV as Component 1, and the other split going directly to the TV as Component 2? The idea here being that I would switch to Component 2 to view available HD broadcasts via my TV's built-in QAM tuner. Would this give me my cake and let me eat it too?

Your thoughts, comments once again appreciated.

Thank you!

Garry B.

Hi, Garry,

Yes, assuming your digital cable feed is strong enough, you can split it the way you describe (use a high quality high bandwidth splitter for this), but one loop would go directly into your TV's cable jack (a coax connector), and the other would go into your cable box. Your cable box would then be connected to your TV via composite, S-video, component or HDMI - whatever it's "best" connector is. This would at least allow you to get HD on those unencrypted HD channels and watch the stuff you can't tune in on the TV's tuner from the box (albeit not in HD).

Hope that helps.

-Chris