Trying to break free of the Cable Mafia...HELP!

[mdleone]

Hi friends,

I live in Alachua, FL, where the cable provider is Cox and there is no FiOS. I was planning on switching from cable to DirecTV, but discovered that they do not offer local channels in my area. I thought, "No problem...I'll just get an HD antenna," until I realized that my trusty Panasonic CRT HDTV doesn't have a digital tuner. If I can't run a line from the antenna directly to my TV, is there some way I can leverage the satellite box to get the antenna signal to the TV? If not, would I be able to run a line from the antenna to a digital converter box, and then from the converter box to the TV to pick up local channels in HD? I'm trying to make this work, but not having locals through satellite is a pain. Any advice you folks can give would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[hdtvlabs]

You need an external ATSC tuner. You can get a decent box really cheap these days. A good tuner should support 720p an d1080i resolution, have HDMI output port, and provide analog out put as well if you have old analog NTSC television.

Check out this Centronics HDTV tuner. It comes with an HDMI output and is a good value for $60. There is also a good box from Samsung (can't find a link now) but I think it is a lot more expensive.