Saw an ad today for the new Panasonic 34CT34WX52 ( $3,488 Can). As I intend to make the jump to HDTV via digital cable ( Shaw), I searched for the specs for this new unit.
On the US site, www.panasonic.com, they have the specs and list 480p/1080i as the display capability. But, there is a distressing disclaimer :

" HDTV Display Capability - Optional set-top receiver required to view DTV programming............. However, standards for cable connectivty have not yet been finalized. Consequently, this product may not be compatible with your cable system."

Does this mean that if you buy an HDTV now, you may find at some future date that you can't receive HD. Does this mean one should buy a set with a wider range of signal capability?

As a newbie trying to make a selection of an HD capable unit to replace a 27" analog, this language threw me. Hope someone can explain the level of risk in purchasing now rather than in a few years.

Saw an ad today for the new Panasonic 34CT34WX52 ( $3,488 Can). As I intend to make the jump to HDTV via digital cable ( Shaw), I searched for the specs for this new unit.
On the US site, www.panasonic.com, they have the specs and list 480p/1080i as the display capability. But, there is a distressing disclaimer :

" HDTV Display Capability - Optional set-top receiver required to view DTV programming............. However, standards for cable connectivty have not yet been finalized. Consequently, this product may not be compatible with your cable system."

Does this mean that if you buy an HDTV now, you may find at some future date that you can't receive HD. Does this mean one should buy a set with a wider range of signal capability?

As a newbie trying to make a selection of an HD capable unit to replace a 27" analog, this language threw me. Hope someone can explain the level of risk in purchasing now rather than in a few years.


It just means that the TV does not have an ATSC digital tuner for receiving over-the-air (antenna) H/DTV and it does not have a digital tuner based on an OpenCable standard built in. You will still have a standard NTSC tuner that is used for OTA reception and analog cable TV.

In the case of "digital" channels, Canadian cable companies you will get a set top box such as the ones from Scientific Atlanta (Rogers) or Motorola (Shaw) to display digital signals whether it be SDTV or HDTV. Same goes for ExpressVu (Dish Networks receiver) and StarChoice (Motorola/GI receiver).

These boxes ouput the signals via S-VIDEO (SDTV) or Component (HDTV) currently, but there may be a future set top box that only outputs these signals via a DVI port. You therefore may wish to look for a TV with DVI on it just to be safe (well that's the word right now), even though you may not need it for sometime to come.

In the U.S. they want to standardize on an OpenCable standard for delivery of H/DTV signals via the straight cable into your house, not requiring a set top box, but these have not been defined. Maybe your next HDTV will feature this but it really isn't that important.

The FCC in the U.S. stated that all TVs over 32" (I believe) must have digital tuners built in but this will add an estimated $250 to the cost of the TV. These tuners will only display OTA signals and not digital cable signals unless the OpenCable consortium can fix these issues before 2004. All TVs regardless of size must have a digital tuner in them by 2007.

However, the chances are you are not going to use this tuner are nil compared to people in the U.S. that receive a lot of OTA TV compared to cable/satellite TV, unlike Canada where very few people receive TV via OTA.

That's a really old disclaimer that created at a time when the ONLY way to receive H/DTV was with an over-the-air receiver like Panasonic's TU-DST50. Since there was no digital cable standard at the time (still isn't, really), the manufactures could not guarantee that this same set-top would work with the cable system. History has shown that indeed it will not.

Maybe we'll get there someday.

Some RCA TVs are now coming with a builtin Directv tuner. A buddy of mine just got one.