On 3/16/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">R. G. Newbury</b> <<a href="mailto:newbury@mandamus.org">newbury@mandamus.org</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
jmk wrote:<br><br>><br>> This may be a dumb question... I'm wondering what level of cable service<br>> I need in order to access QAM. Do I need the HD tier, if I decide that<br>> all I want is the OTA HD via QAM?
<br><br>You are confusing a number of things here.<br><br>Analog and digital are types of delivery streams.<br>Sd and HD are quality standards for the stream delivered, with HD of<br>course being much better.<br>Cable can deliver analog or digital streams. The digital streams can be
<br>encrypted or unencrypted, bnut if unencrypted are usually QAM256 encoded<br>in order to provide more/better signals.<br>The encrypted strems need a set top box.<br>Entirely separate and distinct, is Over The Air (OTA) digital broadcast.
<br>OTA broadcasts can be HD or SD and at present lots of the -DT stations<br>are broadcasting at SD levels. OTA does not use QAM256.<br><br>So your last phrase makes no sense.</blockquote><div><br>Except in as much that it's common/convenient to refer to the local stations that are available over-the-air, which the cable company (or phone company or satellite company) carries unencrypted, as OTA. Seems like a good question - if you don't subscribe to the digital tier or HD tier, will the HD versions of the local over-the-air stations which the cable company carries still be available as a QAM-encoded stream.
<br><br>-Jerry</div></div>