Digital channels on analog basic?

[Jeffhs]

In regard to my statement that eventually all subscribers to Time Warner Cable will need cable boxes to receive anything on their sets, even if the TV is a flat screen: A friend of mine just moved to a new apartment in another town and told me, when he had cable installed, he had a cable box installed on his 32" flat set; however, where he formerly lived, he was able to connect the cable directly to the set without having to use a box. I don't know what changed between his old apartment and his new one, unless it is now standard procedure for most cable operators to use cable boxes for new installations--even with flat screens.

That makes sense to me, as almost all late-model flat screens have at least one HDMI port (some of the newest 4K ultra-HD sets have as many as four such ports, with most older HDTVs having two, plus one VGA for use with home computers and a USB port), and most recent-model cable boxes have only HDMI outputs. This connection is the only way to get true HD on a flat-screen HDTV; a coax connection from the wall directly to the antenna/cable coax jack on the set will work and will produce a good picture, but it will not produce a high-definition one. My own 19" flat screen is connected directly to the cable coming from the wall, no box, so I'm sure I am not receiving full 1080p HD picture quality. However, that doesn't matter to me since I don't think I could tell the difference between standard definition and HD. My Blu-ray player is connected to my flat screen via an HDMI cable; the player supposedly has a feature that upscales standard DVDs to 1080p HD, but again, I can't tell the difference in picture quality.