BHN Digital Cable without the box on a Mitsubishi RPTV

[mjsuperman]

Has anyone tried to run BHN digital cable with the QAM tuner built into the integrated Mitsubishi TV's and the promise module? If it does work, do you have access to the HD locals? I ask the CSR's over there every now and then if I have to have the box since the TV has a built in QAM tuner and it's always yes, but they hesitate before they answer so it makes me wonder.

Thanks.
mjsuperman

[Leth]

As I understand it yes. Any HDTV reciever will be allowed to recieve the local HD channels and nothing more.

[bdraw]

Yes I have tried it and it works, but not well.

The channel numbers are very odd, and different channels show up at differnt times. Also I was never able to find all the locals at the same time. Some days I could find some, and the next day I would find others.

They scramble everything except the HD locals, and some VOD, you can find some interesting stuff on there sometimes ;).

Also recording doesn't work. This is a well documented problem with the qam tunners, they can't record a watchable stream. There is alot of speculation but no hard facts as to why this is.

[mjsuperman]

Thanks for the info.

bdraw, I saw your posts on avsforum about trying to record from the QAM and not getting anywhere, that's why I figured you had given it a try.

When the firewire enabled boxes come out after April 1, I wonder if we can just plug them into our firewire ports and control them with the TV... that's probably too sweet to be realistic, but you never know... then on top of that if we could access both the TV tuner and the cable box tuner from an application like firebus or capdvhs... I can dream can't I?

mjsuperman

[bdraw]

Thanks for the info.
When the firewire enabled boxes come out after April 1, I wonder if we can just plug them into our firewire ports and control them with the TV... that's probably too sweet to be realistic, but you never know... then on top of that if we could access both the TV tuner and the cable box tuner from an application like firebus or capdvhs... I can dream can't I?


You got the right idea. You will atleast be able to record with capdvhs, if there is no copy protection. If there is copy protection then you will only be able to record to DVHS or a HD DVR, like RCA's DVR10. The firebus software does not, and probably never support encrypted data. I am really hoping that ReplayTV comes out with a DVR that can be controlled through the firewire, and that I can just daisy chain the firewire out the cable box to the Replaytv to the TV, and maybe to the A/V receiver.