Do You Really Need an HDTV Tuner?
If you bought an HDTV recently you may have been offered an HDTV tuner by the sells clerk at the store where you bought your new television set. Perhaps you were never offered one, but the sells person may have mentioned the term while he or she was talking about the in and outs of the product you were interested in. But what is really an HDTV tuner and what is it for? Most high definition capable televisions especially older ones are incapable of receiving over the air signals on their own even if the owner had an antenna. These sets are commonly referred to as HDTV monitors and are really a television set that is capable of displaying the HD ASTC formats but have no means of decoding the digital data that is carried in the signals broadcasted. They are similar in functionality to a computer monitor in that they need direct connections to already decoded data, in this case from sources like cable Tv and satellite Tv boxes. So what can the consumer do to be able to watch their favorite over the air broadcasted channels if they are not available on cable and satellite television? Enter the HDTV tuner. What these devices do is they decode signals that are transmitted over the air so that the monitor (television set) is able to display them. Tuners are not only limited to over the air broadcasts, they are also able to decode signals from cable Tv sources transmitted in unencrypted clear QAM and depending on the region, they may also be able to decode PAL formats.
There are some reasons why you may or may not need one. As of today more and more manufacturers are creating their units with built in tuners to avoid making consumers spend more money or change their mind and buy a product from a competitor that has one built in. The only real reasons why you may consider buying an HDTV tuner is if you prefer over the air broadcasts rather that paid services and want to watch them in HD quality, you can’t watch one of your favorite local channels because it is not available through cable or any paid service you are subscribed to or you want to receive high definition over the air broadcasts or cable Tv on you computer. If you are not interested in any of those three options you do not need a one at all. If you are interested or want to know more about HDTV tuners please visit this page for more valuable information: http://www.faqhdtv.com/hdtv-tuner
