We have Fidelity HD - the HD-DVR. So we have one TV that gets all 9 HD channels.

Looking at Fidelity's site - they have 5 braodcast HD channels (3 networks, TNT, PBS) that you can get with the right tuner (don't need their box to handle the decryption)

My question is this: Are these five channels QAM clear encryped or is it ATSC - meaning I can pick it up with any standard ATSC HD tuner, or do I need a tuner that'll do QAM clear?

How do you like Fidelity's HD service? My folks just got a new 42" plasma HDTV and they had Fidelity digital cable at the time. When we hooked it up, the picture look like crap. After fiddling around with it, we have the cable bypassing the digital cable box and going into an HD-upconverting VCR/DVD recorder combo. The picture quality is much improved, but we're no longer taking advantage of the digital cable portion.

My dad doesn't want to have to pay an extra $10 or $20 a month (whatever it is) for a very limited number of HD channels. If only the Cardinal games would come in in HD, then he'd do it for sure.

Anyway, enough digression... how do you like Fidelity's HD service?

It is QAM. They re-number the channels to weird numbers that only QAM can pickup like 90.2 or some bullshit.

We have a 37" and a 42" HDTV and only the 42" can watch the HD channels because the 37" can't tune QAM....

Fidelity's HD service is fairly good. On my TV at least, TNT will a stutter every 15 minutes or so, just a couple frames at most though. When you tune with QAM, you also lose all program guide data that you would otherwise receive with over the air HD. QAM is great and seems to be a sort of secret that the cable companies have... no reason to buy their box unless you want PVR (and then just get a stand alone PVR that does QAM). Also Fidelity broadcasts all their digital music channels over QAM, but only my PC QAM HD tuner will pick those up.

Can I pickup Fidelity's HD QAM service in TJ?

I can pick up 3 HD channels from TJ, NBC, Fox, and CBS. Although NBC will sometimes disappear and reappear later.

Edit:

Yeah, it has NTSC/ATSC/QAM tuners.

Do you have a QAM tuner in your tv?

My main concern is not having a way to get the QAM encrypted channels without a box. As far as I know there are very few if any tv tuners for the PC that'll do QAM, and the TV I'm Looking at getting (Westinghouse 37 or 42inch 1080p) doesn't have any tuner.

With that said - I've been fairly impressed with Fidelity HD. We had Dish Networks 5 HD channels last year, and while they now have 25 or so, we went with Fidelity so we could get the analog channels on every outlet (as we have one regular box, one hd box, so everyone else gets the 60ish analog channels).

I was impressed that such a small cable company actually had a decent HD offering (9 channels, although I don't think PBS hardly ever has HD content). The quality is fairly good on my 720p projector. NBC, and maybe a couple others, will be a bit choppy at times - not sure if its their signal or the box - but for the most part its fine.