# Can I get OTA through basic cable?



## dubious (Mar 31, 2005)

I just upgraded from a Series 2 to a Premiere with an antenna input. I have basic cable that supplies OTA HD channels to my tv. Tivo folks told me that I have to connect an antenna if I want the Premiere to get the HD channels.
So I'm wondering, if my basic cable has the OTA channels, can I attach a splitter and plug my cable into the antenna input? Would the tivo box recognize the channels?


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

Not with a splitter. Only the 2 tuner Premiere can support OTA and cable. They have a separate coax input for them.


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## dubious (Mar 31, 2005)

That's my situation, a Premiere with two coax inputs for cable and antenna. I want to split the cable and run it to both inputs, instead of using an antenna. I'm hoping for someone more familiar with this stuff to indicate whether it will work before I go to the trouble of running the basic set-up again.


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## eDbolson (Oct 25, 2001)

If your cable company provides the OTA channels over your cable, which they are supposedly required to do, then your TiVo will receive them. The signals are sent as either something called "Clear QAM" which means they can be received even without a cable card (but you will only be able to do manual recordings without the card, even if you are paying for TiVo service), or they are encrypted but the cable card will make them available. The Antenna input can not receive anything from the cable. Broadcast (OTA) digital signals are not the same as the cable channel frequencies or format. If you are talking about getting analog channels that used to be available on cable systems, you are probably out of luck - I don't recall if the Premiere can even handle analog cable signals.

Finally, you can use a splitter to connect the cable directly to the CABLE input of your TV and directly receive Clear QAM channels on the TV without the TiVo.

I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with connecting your cable to the antenna input, but it will not do anything useful.



dubious said:


> That's my situation, a Premiere with two coax inputs for cable and antenna. I want to split the cable and run it to both inputs, instead of using an antenna. I'm hoping for someone more familiar with this stuff to indicate whether it will work before I go to the trouble of running the basic set-up again.


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## dubious (Mar 31, 2005)

Thanks for replying. My purpose was to find out whether I could get my tivo box to recognize the HD broadcast channels that are sent through my cable if I connect the cable (by use of a splitter) to the antenna input on the tivo. I do not have digital cable or a cable card. Currently, my tivo does not recognize the OTA HD channels, (2.1, 5.1 etc.) so I guess I'll have to try an antenna and hope I get reception in my neighborhood.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

dubious said:


> Thanks for replying. My purpose was to find out whether I could get my tivo box to recognize the HD broadcast channels that are sent through my cable if I connect the cable (by use of a splitter) to the antenna input on the tivo. *I do not have digital cable *or a cable card. Currently, my tivo does not recognize the OTA HD channels, (2.1, 5.1 etc.) so I guess I'll have to try an antenna and hope I get reception in my neighborhood.


All HD channels are digital.


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## HomieG (Feb 17, 2003)

And the far majority of OTA channels are digital.

While the OP may have analog cable. It's possible their cable company is sending the OTA channels for his area via unencrypted QAM (and sometimes even 8VSB) over the cable. The channels may have a different virtual channel number, that may or may not be in his guide why doing a channel setup. 

In my own case, local cable company is city-owned. Is use an S3 OLED. An example here is OTA channel 2.1 is 100.1 on cable. However this cable company is so backwards, they don't report the correct virtual channel number to Tribune Media, so I can't use the guide to schedule recordings unless they're set for manual recordings. So I've got an OTA antenna in the attic and use true OTA and cable for most of my channel data to be correct. It works, except for the digital versions of the national cable networks on our cable system. So for those, I setup manual recordings, sometimes season pass manual recordings...and I hate that. Besides being a PITA, the program listing in t Now Playing list is not the actual title//name of the program. Rather, it's just a crude manual recording title.

Here's how messed up my guide data is via Tribune for the cable channels.

100.1 (OTA 2.1) is listed in the guide as 100
100.2 (OTA 5.1) is listed in the guide as 100
100.3 (OTA 11.1) is listed in the guide as 100

So when my TiVo tunes to channel 100, I get the programming really on 100.1.

And yes, I've reported it several times to both TiVo and Tribune, with no corrections ever made.

When I run the channel setup, my S3 picks up the above channels as 100.1, 100.2 and 100.3. But the guide data for all three, while correct, lists all of those under Channel 100, so just the first channel is actually correct when the TiVo records on Channel 100.

This is an example. Cable company actually does this for the digital and HD versions of the cable network channels as well, though since city-owned, there's not a huge selection of those.

Really wish TiVo would have enabled QAM mapping...but I've given up hoping for that.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

dubious said:


> Thanks for replying. My purpose was to find out whether I could get my tivo box to recognize the HD broadcast channels that are sent through my cable if I connect the cable (by use of a splitter) to the antenna input on the tivo. I do not have digital cable or a cable card. Currently, my tivo does not recognize the OTA HD channels, (2.1, 5.1 etc.) so I guess I'll have to try an antenna and hope I get reception in my neighborhood.


Yes your antenna input on the Tivo will not recognize cable tv signals.


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## Jeff_DML (Mar 3, 2009)

No you cannot get OTA via cable but you should be able to rent a cable card and get your local channels in HD. 

As others mentioned, you can probably manually tune to the channels but you will not have guide info so it is pretty useless IMHO.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

You can receive OTA and cable with a cable card, the Tivo Premiere 2 tuner will even label whether its OTA with ANT or cable with CABLE. There may be duplicates, like 7.2 on cable and 7.2 on ANT but they are on different frequencies. The version on cable are actually QAM, which without a cable card, Tivo cannot map it and place guide data.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

HomieG said:


> ...
> 
> In my own case, local cable company is city-owned... However this cable company is so backwards, they don't report the correct virtual channel number to Tribune Media, so I can't use the guide to schedule recordings unless they're set for manual recordings. ...
> And yes, I've reported it several times to both TiVo and Tribune, with no corrections ever made....


If it's city owned, you need to quit wasting your time with Trib and TiVo and go to someone like the mayor and say "Let's talk about whether you get my vote in the next election or not", and make them understand that they have an obligation to report correct information to TMS.

This isn't fighting city hall unless there's some bizarre reason for city hall to actively want the cable system giving out false info, in which case see if a local news outfit of some sort has a budding young "Woodstein" looking to make a name for themselves and hang a scalp from their belt.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

eDbolson said:


> If your cable company provides the OTA channels over your cable, which they are supposedly required to do, then your TiVo will receive them. The signals are sent as either something called "Clear QAM" which means they can be received even without a cable card (but you will only be able to do manual recordings without the card, even if you are paying for TiVo service), or they are encrypted but the cable card will make them available. The Antenna input can not receive anything from the cable. Broadcast (OTA) digital signals are not the same as the cable channel frequencies or format. If you are talking about getting analog channels that used to be available on cable systems, you are probably out of luck - I don't recall if the Premiere can even handle analog cable signals.
> 
> Finally, you can use a splitter to connect the cable directly to the CABLE input of your TV and directly receive Clear QAM channels on the TV without the TiVo.
> 
> I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish with connecting your cable to the antenna input, but it will not do anything useful.


They aren't required to provide them. My Cable provider will loose the ABC feed unless they pay a fee increase of 400%.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

dubious said:


> So I'm wondering, if my basic cable has the OTA channels, can I attach a splitter and plug my cable into the antenna input? Would the tivo box recognize the channels?


Who's your cable company, in what city?


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

i think the OP is confusing terminology due to the lack of understanding of the technology and the rest of you might not be understanding what he is asking. 

i believe that because he currently is watching clear qam on his tv and is able to watch CBS, NBC, ABC, etc, he thinks that since they are OTA channels being sent in clear QAM, it must be the same way they would be delivered via an antenna. So his thinking is that if he splits his clear qam line to the antenna input on the tivo, it should only receive the OTA channels. This is not the case. the OTA channels being broadcast over the air are ATSC (the only input method the tivo accepts via the antenna input) not clear QAM (the way your cable provider is sending them. two different delivery methods achieving the same goal. 

you have to use the cable input on the tivo to get all the channels you subscribe to. in order to get guide data for those channels, even the ones you call ota, you need a cable card. 

of course all of this holds true if it is clear qam and not analog.


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