Cable-ready
is a designation which indicates that a
TV set
or other
television
-receiving device (such as a
VCR
or
DVR
) is capable of receiving
cable TV
without a
set-top box
.
[1]
The term originated with
analog TV
, which uses different frequencies for cable versus
over-the-air
. This gives more channels, and at lower
frequencies
, so that early systems did not have to be so
broadband
and were therefore less expensive to build.
For
North American cable television frequencies
,
[2]
the
VHF
channels 2 to 13 are the same, while an extra 51 cable channels exist between there and over-the-air
UHF
channel 14. Thus, over-the-air channel 14 can be seen on cable channel 65. Conversely, those 51 extra channels (plus an additional five inserted at 95 to 99) cannot be seen at all on a device which is
not
cable-ready. A "181-channel tuner" receives 125 on cable (1 to 125), plus 10 (126 to 135) more for digital cable ready TVs, plus the 56 (14 to 69) which are not identical in both (2 to 13). Other cable channels, 0, 00 and 1, which along with channels 136-158 are ill-defined and thus rarely used, and often not included in otherwise cable-ready tuners. Those "lowest numbered" channels often reside between VHF channels four and five on HRC (harmonically related carrier) and IRC (incrementally related carrier) systems where the normally four MHz gap is increased to six MHz, wide enough for one NTSC channel. Similar situations exist in the rest of the world as well.
Another use of a cable-ready
tuner
is for receiving
amateur television
(ATV) in North America, where the main ATV
band
appears on cable channels 56 to 59, 57 being the most popular. Most
repeaters
output on these channels, while input from amateur operators is often in another band.
[3]
Digital cable
[
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]
Digital cable-ready
or
DCR
is a label used by manufacturers on new
televisions
which feature built-in technology that allows consumers to receive
SDTV
and
HDTV
digital cable
programs.
[4]
Usually this is a
QAM tuner
, since over-the-air broadcasts are either
COFDM
(
DVB-T
and
ISDB-T
) or
8VSB
(
ATSC
-T). Some cable TV systems in North America use
16VSB
instead of
256QAM
, for which there are no cable-ready devices. Only channels that are left unencrypted can be received using this method, however encrypted channels can be viewed without a set-top-box using systems such as a
CableCard
or using a
Downloadable Conditional Access System
.
Interactive digital cable ready
or
iDCR
extends DCR. Unlike the DCR standard, iDCR supports
interactive
customer features such as
electronic program guides
,
pay-per-view
and
video on demand
. Consumer devices which support iDCR also support the new
OpenCable Application Platform
(OCAP) standard developed by
CableLabs
.
In practice however, the rental of
cable converter boxes
(or since the late 2010s, the rent-to-own arrangement of
digital media players
with a provider's app if the customer prefers) has remained a lucrative business line for most cable providers, and they have preferred to phase out support of analog or digital cable-ready televisions which are not CableCard compliant and rent converter boxes out instead, with prevention of
cable theft
another reason for the arrangement.
References
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External links
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