Talk:QAM (television)

Rename

QAM tuner is a feature of some HDTV hardware. QAM tuner seems to be the digital cable equivalent of the ATSC tuner, bringing in high-definition television signal over the cable instead of over-the-air. See [1], [2], [3]. This Wikipedia article should be renamed so that the T in tuner is lowercase.—204.42.17.145 09:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Some info from sources

Home Theater: How Federal Regulations Affect the Products You Install - Residential Systems (Jul 8, 2004)

• "'ATSC' tuning [...] gets you the local, over-the-air HD signals, but not anything from a cable hook-up. The key there is to look for sets that have “QAM” tuners built-in. That lets the set deal with digital cable signals."
• "Remember that a QAM tuner alone, without a CableCard, will only allow reception of “in the clear” digital cable channels[...]"

Does Your Next Video Display Need to Have a QAM Tuner? - Home Theater & Sound (February 2004)

• "QAM stands for "quadrature amplitude modulation," the format by which digital cable channels are encoded and transmitted via cable. [..] The FCC recently issued a ruling requiring all cable providers to use the same QAM scheme; the tuners beginning to appear in home video displays now use this scheme."

LCD Terms & Definition - Sceptre.com

• "With the QAM tuner, users can connect their cable directly to their TV and watch any digital and/or HD cable station that is not encrypted. Integrated QAM tuner allows free reception of unscrambled digital cable programming offered by certain cable providers. "

—204.42.20.33 02:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I've moved these into the main article, thanks. --carlb (talk) 17:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

QAM vs. DVB-C

Is there a difference between QAM tuners and DVB-C tuners? —80.171.40.204 21:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

DVB-C uses 16-QAM, 32-QAM, 64-QAM, 128-QAM or 256-QAM. -Dawn McGatney —Preceding unsigned comment added by McGatney (talk • contribs) 07:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

QAM specifies a modulation only; there are various other specifications that indicate what format the digital data will have once it has been demodulated. These other standards specify things such as the amount of data in each packet and the format of various digital tables such as the list of channels and the programme guide. This leaves plenty of differences between ATSC-over-QAM vs. DVB-C in how the set converts the raw binary data back into a watchable TV programme. The two systems are therefore completely incompatible. --carlb (talk) 17:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

UK English Replaced with US English

By its own terms, this article is about a North American technical specification. While I realize that includes, on its face, Canada, which uses UK English, the article refers to the FCC, a US government institution, and seems to be more about US television technical specifications then anything else. Obviously, anyone who is able to read English in the world may have an interest in accessing this page and their native form of English may be UK English. As I understand Wikipedia style rules on this issue an English article should be written consistently in US or UK English, but no preference is otherwise specified. Having provided all the provisos upfront, I would still argue that the most interested readers of this article will be residents of the US. I am sure a Wikipedia administrator could shed some light on this factual question by reference to Wikipedia logs. I would further argue that some casual readers, as distinguished from readers sufficiently knowledgeable in the technical aspects of this article to understand them, will be confused by the UK English form of " analog," and may not understand it at all even in the context of this article. In any event, I fully expect a complete reversion back to UK English not because that makes more sense, but because Wikipedia moderators tend to make decisions biased towards article authors and allow them to take virtual ownership over their articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.20.188.9 (talk) 17:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The only US-specific technical content in this page is the bit about the CableCARD. --carlb (talk) 04:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there are quite a few US only specifics. For example, requirements about having to rebroadcast ... such as "If cable providers provide rebroadcasts of locally aired programming, they must a..." is US only, and not the same in Canada. I am sure that the same would not be true for Mexico either. The problem is that the start of the article discusses 'North American Digital Television", and then proceeds to list US-centric regulations / etc as if they are an N/A standard...

This is really an article about US digital television, and all of the FCC and US legalise somewhat validates this. Nothing wrong with that, but it should be specified to avoid confusion... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.56.81.250 (talk) 04:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

ClearQAM

I stumbled across a "ClearQAM tuner" in some HDTV description. What is it exactly? Article here mentions "Clear QAM tuner", but doesn't really explain what is it exactly. Is is simply a tuner that is only able to decode free (unencrypted) channels, or something more? --89.113.75.51 (talk) 15:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Narrow definition

QAM is about much more than cable television; it is a modulation scheme in general use for telecom signals. While that includes cable TV it certainly is not limited to it. The article should be expanded to indicate this, and the title changed. Madgenberyl (talk) 13:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)