[maxintosh]

Despite considering myself a pretty intelligent, technically-oriented person, TV standards hurt my brain. I'm not a big TV guy but I wanted to be able to follow election coverage and catch my shows in my cramped apartment without dropping 800 bucks on a TV. So I ordered Time Warner basic digital cable (in Manhattan) and an Eye TV 250 (2008 edition with Clear QAM support). That should be able to plug right into the coax cable (bypassing the set-top box) and pull in basic cable plus a few digital HDTV channels right? Will I be missing large blocks of channels if I don't use the cable box? Will I get a signal AT ALL? Or should I have ordered analog cable?

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by maxintosh 

Despite considering myself a pretty intelligent, technically-oriented person, TV standards hurt my brain. I'm not a big TV guy but I wanted to be able to follow election coverage and catch my shows in my cramped apartment without dropping 800 bucks on a TV. So I ordered Time Warner basic digital cable (in Manhattan) and an Eye TV 250 (2008 edition with Clear QAM support). That should be able to plug right into the coax cable (bypassing the set-top box) and pull in basic cable plus a few digital HDTV channels right? Will I be missing large blocks of channels if I don't use the cable box? Will I get a signal AT ALL? Or should I have ordered analog cable?

Depending on how your cable works, you will get all the channels on the EyeTV that you would get if you unplugged the cable box. On my cable, I get about 70 channels without a box (basically, "expanded basic cable"). With a box, I get more.

I would call your cable provider and ask them what happens if you don't use the box.

HOWEVER.

You can get the signal out of teh box and into the EyeTV (that's what I do). You can even get an IR blaster called ZephIR that'll change the channels on the box for you. Pretty neat stuff.

[vmarks]

You will get channels that are analog, 02-126 (not always do cable networks use analog through 126)

You will get the local broadcast channels as QAM. Maybe a few more.

If you use the cable box and the ZephIR, you'll get all the channels as analog, but you'll get them all.

If you use the cable box to the composite inputs (the cable dongle to the side of the EyeTV hardware) and the coax to a splitter right before the cable box, so that they both get the signal directly, then you'll be able to potentially get the best of both worlds, but you'll have to set it up twice - once to autotune with the ZephIR, and once to autotune with the coax for QAM.