QAM Tuner Use

A QAM tuner does do some strange things; most digital cable companies still do not send you any information about how to use QAM; although it's generalized as a plug-and-play device to allow you to receive unencrypted digital cable channels, QAM modulates the sent signals so sometimes it will change the frequency of channels, switch them around on you, unexpectedly, and sometimes you will not quite get a clear signal on some of them without using a secondary device to further tune the QAM; these secondary devices can be easily found for ATSC tuners but are more difficult to find for your QAM tuner; QAM tuners are common now, but their use is still underutilized by providers and largely un-understood by TV users.

Currently in the US you can pick up many digital channels using QAM, as digital cable there is mandated to not be scrambled (encrypted) with the exception of pay-per-view channels. Other countries vary; in Canada most digital cable is also unencrypted so you can usually pick up quite a few channels depending on where you are and what the cable provider allows to be unscrambled. High definition TV is another story, and you'll very rarely pick up a hi-def channel in Canada through QAM as most are encrypted. You can usually pick up audio from the music stations but all or almost all video is encrypted.

With the current hot trend of viewing TV on your computer or laptop, the QAM tuner has adapted; you can buy an external QAM tuner box for your computer, or an internal QAM tuner card for a PCI slot. For laptops, there's a very nifty new item, the USB TV tuner; this little version looks exactly like a USB flash drive, it is small and has a USB plug on one end and a cable input on the other. You hook your TV cable to this and then plug it into your computer's USB port. I've shown a few samples of these by the popular maker Hauppage on the QAM Tuners page.