How to get 'free' HD with a QAM tuner
28.04.11
With all the talk of 3D, plasma vs. LCD, LED TV backlighting schemes, 240Hz vs. 120Hz, and all other sorts highfalutin technical specs, there's one small but potentially important TV feature that doesn't get a whole lot of play: The QAM tuner.
Just what is a QAM tuner? Well, according to Wikipedia , QAM stands for "quadrature amplitude modulation, the format by which digital cable channels are encoded and transmitted via cable television providers."
More specifically, it allows you to pull in certain digital cable channels without the use of a set-top box. Or, as the Wikipedia entry puts it, "an integrated QAM tuner allows the free reception of unscrambled digital programming sent 'in the clear' by cable providers, usually local broadcast stations, cable radio channels, or in the case of providers which have transitioned to do so, public access channels."
Now that we have the definitions out the way, let's move on to the real world. I wanted to mount a small LCD TV on the wall in my kitchen--but I didn't want to deal with a set-top box. First off, the place where I wanted to put it (above a table that was attached to the wall), there was simply no place to put a set-top box and I couldn't build a shelf for it inside the wall. To get that nice, clean, wall-mounted TV look, I simply couldn't have a box. I also didn't feel like paying $6 a month to rent a box if I didn't have to.
[ Via: CNET (blog) | Read more... ]