Anyone familiar with digital to analog cable TV converters?

[subysti]

so we gave out daughter an old 46" HD projection TV we had sitting around for a long time. Nice TV for a 15 year old TV, many inputs, 2 tuners etc etc. we hook it up to her cable and no signal, I thought I would need a converter but tried anyways. Went to Walmart bought an RCA digital to analog converter for $40 hook it up and it scans for channels. Finds 180+ channels, cool we're in business, but noooooo. Every channel we try says scrambled signal. OK. This is a new apartment she needs a cable box from spectrum but then her newer LCD tv picks up the channels fine.

So do I need a specific digital to analog converter??

 

[Scottie]

I'm willing to bet her newer LCD TV has a built in "Clear QAM" tuner. Most cable companies broadcast their signals over coax via QAM encoding these days, and a QAM tuner allows you to basically decode those channels. It is not a digital to analog converter, but rather a digital tuner. Any "converter" you buy would need to list a QAM tuner specifically. Unfortunately there's lots of crap out there. It might be easier to get another tv with a QAM tuner in it, or pick up a cable box from the cable company.

 

[subysti]

@Scottie thanks for the info. I found one online with a QAM tuner built in so I ordered it for her. She's 5 hours away and that TV isn't coming back. It must have weighed 200lbs and getting it to a 2nd floor apartment wasn't fun we need to make it work there or its just for Netflix.

 

[Scottie]

Sounds good. Let me know how it turns out.

 

[adrianp89]

As Scottie said... if you want basic channels you will need to get her an antenna. That is what the digital to analog box is meant for, over the air.

 

[mark_m]

Does the set have one hdmi input?