Free HDTV?

[onlyCOpunk]

Well I bought an Insignia HDTV last weekend because Best Buy was having such good deals. Today I decided to hook the cable up to it after just using it for PS3 and computer monitor use. What do I find? We have basic cable mind you, no digital packages or anything. The TV came with an ASTC tuner? I set it to auto tune. Aside from picking up the 30 or so basic cable channels, it picked up 20 more digital channels. All the locals, 3 pay per view channels and a channel that shows only softcore porn.

Is this the case normally? The cable website makes you believe you must subscribe to an expensive digital cable package then pay an extra 10 bucks for HDTV.

 

[Raincity]

I get the local channels in HDTV from Cox with the basic package.

 

[Mloot]

I recently had our cable tv turned off and am now using only an outdoor antenna with an ATSC stb hooked to my older, standard def. tv. If I had an HD-capable set, I would be getting all my local channels' HD programs for free, but for now they are downrezzed to 480i. Still, free digital tv on my older set looks pretty good to me.

 

[ViRGE]

That's normal, your local cable company isn't encrypting the local channels specifically so that you can tune them. As for the PPV stuff, they're not encrypting those because they're stupid. Those are likely on-demand channels and will come & go all the time.

 

[spacejamz]

sounds like you have a QAM tuner which will decode some scrambled cable channels...

 

[montypythizzle]

Softcore Porn

Um, what cable company are you with? Might want to get on that cable train 😛
I get locals, some music channels (w/o the song title or anything, still DD signal), some kind of Sleuth cable channel, and a Toon Disney channel.