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Originally Posted by Jeffhs
Who wants to watch high-definition television on a huge black and white screen? I cannot see the sense in watching HD TV on a television set old enough to vote and then some... How does HDTV reception on a standard NTSC TV compare to that viewed on a flat screen of the same size?
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Jeff, I think you are mixing the terms "HD" and "HDTV" with the more general "digital TV signals". With that in mind, you answered your own question, earlier in your post:
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old TVs designed for NTSC standards cannot process HD signals anyway -- unless the box downconverts HD digital signals to analog.
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That is exactly what cable boxes can do, and of course the "digital TV converter boxes" (used for over-the-air with an antenna) as well. The input may be HD cable, standard digital (but non-HD) cable, or HD or standard-definition digital over-the-air TV, but the output of whichever box you use will be analog NTSC, converted to TV channel 3 or 4 the same as in the old VCR days.
How does it compare? I have done this with several restored antique TV sets both color and B&W. The picture looks like the best possible, crystal-clear reception you could imagine on a traditional TV set-
to the limits of that TV set's original abilities. In other words, it is a clear signal but it is NOT high-definition, because
the TV set itself is not a high-definition set.
Regarding your questions about "free" HD signals, the vast majority of cable-TV subscribers DO use cable boxes and do not bother with the limited abilities of built-in QAM tuners. Cable companies, of course, love this for the exact reason you dislike it: The extra cost to use those boxes.
Regarding channel numbers and entering them, you probably already know how digital over-the-air (ATSC) TV can make a signal that is really on, say, channel 28 appear as "Channel 5" (to match the old NTSC VHF channel number) by using "remapping", also called "PSIP". Well, QAM signals also do this but in a far more complicated setup. Basically, I think you cannot watch ANY digital-cable (QAM) channels until your TV has done its "channel scan" on the whole cable band, and even then you can only type in the numbers it finds during the scan, not any others you "expect" to be there. Worse yet, cable boxes themselves can be programmed by the cable signals to display their own set of "channel numbers", so the numbers you get with your QAM tuner may not even be related at all to the familiar numbers you know from a cable box or TV-guide cable list.