We had that type of Jerrold box (with the 13 buttons, a fine tuning control, and a switch to select one of three ranges of channels) when Lake County, Ohio got cable service in the early 1980s -- 1982, if memory serves. There was one on the living room TV and one on my Zenith 13" portable in my bedroom, but we never had remote control cable boxes. These Jerrold boxes received up to, IIRC, 39 channels and worked well on the cable systems of the time, but of course they will not work with today's digital cable systems. I wonder if Jerrold has since developed cable boxes that will receive digital channels, and which look almost exactly like the old analog ones. I know Motorola's DTV box is a fancy, computer-controlled affair (I had one when I had digital cable some years ago), but am not sure if Jerrold, et al. have come out with such boxes for digital cable as well.

I would think they have, since all cable systems are or soon will be all digital. I just read online an article (from Broadcasting and Cable.com) that stated the FCC will end, shortly, its must-carry regulations which now require all cable companies to carry analog as well as digital channels. The analog service is now used mostly by cable subscribers with old NTSC TVs who want those channels but do not want a cable box (i.e. they want to connect the cable directly to the TV). When this rule is eliminated, however, everyone, regardless of what kind of TV they own (I assume this will also include flat screens), will have to rent a cable box to get anything other than broadcast channels on their sets. Time Warner Cable is one cable operator that may be exempt from this, as every channel they carry is now in digital format, even if the user's TV shows "NTSC" in the info box which appears when one changes channels.

The FCC forbids cable operators from scrambling, or otherwise rendering unwatchable, broadcast channels; however, since TW's service (across all tiers, including, if memory serves, standard cable) is now and has been for some time all digital, I do not think any change in the agency's (FCC) regulations will affect them to any great extent.

BTW, in my area and across all other systems in northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania, Time Warner Cable moved the TV Guide Channel from analog channel 13 to digital channel 230, effective today, June 13 (!), 2012. I can't help but wonder what other channels and/or services may be next in line to be eliminated from standard cable. :scratch2:

I say "June 13 (!)" because of the date of this change, which is today, June...yup, you guessed it...13th. I wonder if Time Warner purposely planned it this way, i.e. to have the date of the change coincide with the TV Guide Channel's former analog channel position. :scratch2:

After today's FCC ruling... I give analog cable six months, but little more.

Yep the end days are near for analog cable...

http://broadcastengineering.com/ott/...nset_06132012/

Time Warner dropped analog TBS a few weeks back .
So, by Jan, 1, 2014, I won't have analog 2-13 fed by the cable co.?

Big loss.. the feeds are often skewed in the digital realm, as in a local news affiliate having dialog sync issues with visible pixelation, or channel 2 losing all sound for a few days.
The drop feed is over the course of a few blocks here, and the runs are all new RG6 with 3 split lines off my drop.

Well techinally THERE IS NO ANALOG CABLE ANYMORE..... (All they do is feed the digital channels onto an analog channel (Which is not true analog))

Sadly, you are correct. There is very little all-analog content available nowadays. Unless you have a tape library or produce live video, it is all digitized somewhere along the line.
I'm not saying that this is inherently bad; But it is what it is.
Sort of how audiophiles listen to FM stereo on quality tuners, when most(or all) stations are broadcasting music from digital source files.

Digital this, digital that; I have a two-word explanation for it all: cash grab.

Well I would say it is bad!!

They are slowly destroying all analog media AND ITS VERY SAD...... There is nothing better in my opinion!!

Update:
Cable bill this quarter had a statement regarding their ceasing analog cable service.
Free digital converters available til Dec. 2014, and then 99cents per month per converter as of Jan 2015.
Change occurs .."on or around June 18 2013"....guess that means 2014?(since it still works fine )

There goes free 2 through 13 in the garage and attic !!!!
I rather liked my 'vinyl records of TV service' haha

If those bandits at T-W cable discontinue analog cable, a vintage TV collector like me, has absolutely no further use for cable. I like to run my old sets through the channels, using the tuners and remote controls.
Even the Porta-Color I just acquired, gets channels on all positions of the tuner, even a few on UHF. :thmbsp:

Same here. In NYC we lost CBS 2 on T-W cable and also Showtime.
The internet service is often intermittently slow, even after a modem change, and there have been other issues with On-demand and the VOIP phone.
No wonder why all my neighbors are on FiOs and we are one of the only ones left on my block.

I'm phasing out my old tvs when they break, My avatar TV is a rare set, has no collector value tho.

Really this technology went out with the hula hoop!!!!Grab a new TV, Samsung makes a nice set.








:banana::banana::banana::banana:

I will never buy a Chinese piece of crap like that

If your avatar TV does break, but is still fully intact (mainly thinking of the safety cap problem here), bring it to me and I'll buy you some of that fine china.

Wife and I always watch the Lawrence Welk show on PBS on Sunday nights. Time Warner here recently took to the HD changeover, and instead of the channels being unwatchable on analog sets, they're actually framed much better for analog sets......at least for the time being. On older shows that are in non-HD format, they put the black bars on the sides of the screen instead of top and bottom. Seems they stopped rearranging the picture to a wide aspect ratio.

Interestingly enough, with the black bars on the sides of the screen (and station logos placed in those bars on the sides in a relief tone in a similar color on some channels), the picture is just horrendously annoying. Whether this will change again and the picture eventually be totally unavailable for analog remains to be seen.

My wife said to me "we might have to get one of those old color sets up here for Sunday nights, this is just annoying"

:banana:

Now of course I could play with the picture settings for each channel and broadcast that's like that, but that's a huge PITA.....