Home theater basics
Cable
Your cable provider may be the answer, and in some cases, the HDTV receiver is free.Upside: Wide variety of programming available, including cable HDTV networks and local HDTV stations; many carriers will provide the set-top box or HD package for free or less than $10 per month.
Downside: While more HDTV programming is available over cable than over an antenna, choices are still spotty; outlying areas may not have cable access at all; regular monthly charges still apply.
Forecast: With more providers nationwide coming onboard with HDTV, cable offers the most convenient high-def hookup option for most people.
There's a good chance that you can get HDTV signals through your current cable provider. As of September 2004, about 90 million cable customers could get HDTV stations, and all of the top 100 cable markets in the country were "passed" by a cable company with HDTV programming. That's the good news. The bad news is that most providers carry only a few of the more than 17 HDTV cable networks.
Equipment
Programming
Numerous cable networks have jumped on the HDTV bandwagon. HBO and Showtime subscribers can watch favorites such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, and The L Word in HDTV. HBO and Showtime both offer 24-hour HD movie channels where the majority of films appear in HDTV, while subsidiary networks such as Cinemax, the Movie Channel, and Starz all come in HD versions.
Many other cable-only networks boast HD programming, including ESPN and ESPN2 (SportsCenter, selected games from MLB, the NFL, NBA, and college sports), NBC's Universal HD (West Wing and Battlestar Galactica), the Discovery Channel (The Jeff Corwin Experience and Crocodile Hunter), INHD and INHD2 (IMAX movies, NBA basketball, concerts), TNT HD (The Closer, NASCAR and selected NBA games), and NBA TV (with about 50 games per season). Coverage is still spotty, however; just because your cable provider has these stations doesn't mean you'll get the HDTV versions.
Availability
While there are plenty of cable HDTV cable networks on tap, most cable companies carry only a handful of them. Most of the big carriers we surveyed offered about seven or eight HDTV stations each, usually including HDTV versions of major networks HBO, Showtime, and a few other choices.
Local HDTV stations have also been slow to arrive on cable. As of January 2005, cable operators carried about 504 of the country's 750-plus local digital broadcasters. That means there's some chance that you won't be able to watch your local ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, or WB affiliates in HDTV over your cable setup. You could always watch your local HDTV stations using an over-the-air antenna, but we'd rather get all our HDTV from a single source.
Many of today's HDTV sets require a set-top box to watch high-definition programs over cable. However, thanks to new "plug and play" guidelines enacted by Congress and the FCC, a growing number of new HDTV sets can decode digital cable signals without a set-top box. The first plug-and-play HDTV sets, officially called Digital Cable Ready (DCR), began rolling off assembly lines in late 2004. Cable operators are still working out the system's kinks, but--in a perfect world--you simply plug the cable into your new DCR HDTV set, insert a CableCard (a smart card from your cable company that unscrambles premium channels), and surf away. Meanwhile, HDTVs with QAM tuners but no card access--meaning they'll work with only unscrambled DTV broadcasts--are also available. Depending on your cable provider, one of these sets could allow you to receive some high-def channels by simply plugging in the cable.
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