| From: William Case <billlinux@xxxxxxxxxx>
| Here in Ottawa, my cable supplier is slowly going to HDTV and I think I
| will try to find a tuner card that works with HDTV and/or digital.
In Toronto, the cable company is Rogers. In Ottawa too, your supplier
is Rogers.
The cable company is going digital, for HD (always digital) and SD. At
some point they will turn off the analogue signal (the CRTC has
already set the policy).
All HD content on Rogers here is encrypted (some or all of Toronto).
No tuner card can decode the signal. It used to be the case the basic
digital SD content was unencrypted. TV tuners that could decode QAM
could do the job. No longer.
Ottawa Rogers might not yet have implemented this policy. It probably
will.
In the US, the FCC requires cable companies to support the flawed
"CableCard" standard. The Canadian regulator (CRTC) imposes no such
requirement.
If you want digital TV with a tuner in your computer, your best bet is
to get an antenna and use a tuner that supports ATSC. I have no idea
if you in Ottawa can get any of the US channels that way.
It is possible to use a set-top box and a capture card. Changing the
channel is awkward and likely unreliable ("IR blaster"). Digitizing
true HD is hard -- the signal has to got to analogue and back and the
bandwidth of consumer digitizers is limited. Eventually most or all
HD signals will be protected by HDCP making this task impossible.
The bottom line is that the Canadian cable companies have managed to
arrange a monopoly on PVRs. Stupid CRTC.
