Comcast and extra cable boxes????

[Negativecreep0]

i have 2 flat panel tvs in the house, one plasma, and one regular tv. I want to hook all to the internet, I have the silver comcast package with the hbo and hdtv crap. So i have one HDTV DVR reciever box that is connected to the big plasma tv. If i want the other 3 tvs to have cable cards or boxes its an extra 8.95 a box comcast said a month. i dont wanna pay 26 bucks a month extra. Is there any work around this? If my flat panels have a built in hdtv tuner can i just plug the coax cable right into the back of these tvs and get all the channels? Or do i need a box?


thanks for any help

[JoyMonkey]

I'm pretty sure that any HDTV that has an 'inbuilt tuner' means it's got an OTA tuner for getting local 'over the air' channels. You need the box to decrypt all the digital cable channels that Comcast provides.
You could probably buy a couple of boxes rather than renting them from Comcast, it will work out cheaper in the end. By law Comcast has to offer an option for you to buy the cable boxes for yourself.

[gnateye]

from what i can tell, the above post is correct, you need their box (or a similar one) to decode their digital and hd channels. however you can still get the basic channels 1-99 without a cable box on any cable ready tv. prolly not exactly what  you were hoping for but its still better than the amount of channels you get without comcast

and like hte above posts mentions, you can buy a specific HDTV over the air antannae to get all the free hdtv stations that are broadcast (all the major networks)

good luck

[JamIt]

Regarding the HDTV over the air antenna, I've got one and it works so-so.  Mine cost about $50, is mounted inside the house (near a window), and my signal flakes out from time to time (I think its weather related).  But when the signal is strong, it looks great.
--JamIt

[TOK]

Most cable companies are not running encrypted QAM yet for the high def. If your TV's have a built in tuner, really go through the channels and see what is in the clear. You won't have the correct channel mapping, but if you scan through the channels you might find some surprises. 

I've seen Sony and Panasonic TV's both do this. Locally, they tune HD in the clear above channel 100.

[delta88]

                  **********Resident Comcast technician***********


You are pretty much stuck with getting theextra boxes. I have seem several customers with the HD antennes hooked up and it does look very good. 2 of which had pc's running MythTv connected. Although if you had  a really cool installer come out (like me) you could ask for the plain digital boxes and the tech could install the dvr's or HDTV boxes and when he gave the serials to his fullfillment center they would not know what kind of boxes they are. I have been out on service calls and all of the plain digials issued where used and Bad so I just used my DVR's as replacments for the customers. it was like xmas for them