cable HDTV

Comcast in Atlanta may be starting a soft or stealth rollout of HDTV in Atlanta. For those who already have the service in aother areas, will I need a HDTV tuner to connect to their receiver? If I only need a monitor, will s-video give me some improvement over ordinary TV?

They started rolling out HDTV several months ago up here near Philly. Yes, you must have a decoder, and Comcast will 'lease' you one. I think they use the Motorola DCT5100. It has component output, so if you have your HDTV setup right, you can get the 1080 resolution. Otherwise you could connect the S-Video and get 500 lines resolutions, basically double the 250 you get with standard coax.

I have Comcast HDTV cable with the 5100 here in the Detroit area. It looks great on a HD ready Tv with component inputs and since I already had digital cable there was not even any extra charge. But I don't think it will give any special improvements through an s-video connection or to a regular TV. Either would still just be 480i. - Tom