I bought a Toshiba LCD HDTV for the master bedroom and while I am waiting for my second Dish Network HD receiver to arrive, I decided to connect my cable coax to it to check it out.

I get the very basic cable programming with my internet service but when I ran the auto channel scan with the QAM tuner I was surprised to pull in Discovery HD, INHD, ESPNHD, ESPN2HD and TNT-HD unencrypted. I also got a few extra SD digital channels. I didn't get any HD locals though.

Have you tried this and if so, what do you get?

I just got cbs, nbc, abc, upn9, and cw11 (or whatever they call it these days) with my QAM tuner. Also got 2 or 3 other NBC (news, weather , etc.), but dont bother with those.

I get my locals, but I have a set top box anyway, so there isn't an advantage in my case. I still have to use an antenna to pick up the local ABC and CW affiliates since my cable provider doesn't bother with those.

It all depends on whether or not your cable company encrypts the HD channels - if not, any QAM tuner equipped TV or STB will pick up those channels.

I get CBS, Fox, ABC, CW and PBS. I think that's it. And some of those only come in when they want to.

True. That is the point of the thread because I was curious what people's cable companies were encrypting in various places.

I used to get those channels unencrypted but now I just get the local broadcast HDs (including the weather and PBS subchannels) unencrypted.