Digital cable reception bad, due to converter box ?

[mlaviolette]

I capture a lot of live TV. My analog cable signal is pretty bad, especially for the higher channel range. A few months ago I decided to try Time Warner digital cable and hooked up their converter box to my 34" HDTV using the 25-pin DIN and a good cable. The HD channels were spectacular (as expected), but the reception on the other channels was actually worse than without the converter, so I took everything back.

I expected the digital converter box to clean up the signal a bit for the non-HD channels, but that was definitely not the case. Moreover the sound volume was greatly reduced when using the converter box. I wasn't expecting HD-quality on non-HD channels, but I was hoping for a cleaner signal.

Was I misguided, or did I just get a bad converter box?

[admin]

This is why I'm not a fan of HD video. It might look good with newly-shot HD content, but everything else we've been watching for 100 years look pitiful. New technology should not make old technology look better.

Something as easy as not using HDMI cables, and choosing s-video or composite instead, will often remove some of that extra "detail" (noise ... lots and lots of NOISe!) that HD provides over older televisions.

You were misguided, and I blame company proganda and salesmen. This sort of realization is starting to become an American epidemic lately.

Sorry you had to go through that without any warning.