cafritz

Aaron62

whoa, that's a new one. I wonder if they were referring to needing their "set top box"? The regular dtv converters (also known as CECB's) won't work with cable.

Boo-Ray

They might be moving channels from their basic cable service to their digital subscription service. If true, you would need to upgrade your cable package and rent a STB or lose the Hallmark channel without much choice.

Eureka

The coupon eligible converter boxes were for OverTheAir broadcast TV received with an antenna only. Those converter boxes will not work on the comcast cable system.

You'll have to obtain a proprietary box from them if you want that channel.

1inxs

cafritz, Welcome to the DTVUSA Forum. The $40.00 Government coupons wouldn't have worked for the Comcast cable box even if they hadn't expired. The coupons were only good for CECBs. So you didn't lose anything by letting them expire.

bicker

As others have mentioned, you're talking about two completely different types of converter boxes. The coupons were for over-the-air reception. They would not help you tune in cable television. Cable uses a far more efficient transmission technology (QAM) than over-the-air reception (8VSB).

As time goes on, you'll likely need digital equipment to receive more and more services with Comcast, just like you already needs digital equipment to receive those services from Comcast's competitors. If you were satisfied with what you had been receiving, I'd consider yourself lucky that it was still available to you through Comcast for so long; as I indicated, you wouldn't have had that opportunity to tune into channels directly using your own analog devices, if you were subscribed to any of Comcast's major competitors.

It should be noted that there are two things that could be going on. As Boo-Ray indicated, it is possible that they're moving some channels from one tier of service to another, and the higher tier of service requires digital service. Alternatively, they could be going mostly all-digital, as part of Project Calvary, moving whole tiers of service from their current analog transmission mode to digital-only. If the latter is the case, you do not (currently) need to use one of their boxes to receive the channels being moved. The equipment that Comcast is using for services moved to all-digital as a result of Project Calvary is currently (meaning that this could change at a later date) prohibited by law from being encrypted. So if you have a QAM tuner in your HDTV, or in your computer (as I do), then you can tune in the channels moved with your own equipment.