[Grovenet] Digital Electronics

[Katie Allnutt]

Has anybody come across this dilemma yet?
We are simpletons. Not that we are dumb, but we live a simple life.  
We have an old fashioned antenna on the roof and get out TV for free.  
But I do like to tape the Sunday morning news programs and watch them  
at my leisure. (One is on channel 6, one is on channel 8 and  
sometimes I'll record channel 2 or 12 also depending on  what time  
they come on since I can only record one channel at a time.)

Right now life is good. I can program the recorder to turn itself on,  
change the channels at the appropriate time, record what I want and  
turn itself off.  All of this can happen with me in a different city  
if I wish.

With all the new conversion to digital stuff coming out, we  
understand that we will have to get a converter box and all that. But  
we have talked to the young bucks at the electronics stores (they can  
hardly fathom life with an antenna) and for the most part they have  
no clue how to solve the dilemma without replacing all our electronics.
How in the world with a converter box do you get the different  
signals to come out of the converter box? It appears that the digital  
boxes will only send out the signal of one channel at a time. If I  
want to record 2 or three shows on different channels, I have to  
manually tell the converter box to change the channels.

Analog pass through does not seem to be the answer because come Feb  
'09 the signals that I want to send to the VCR will not be analog, so  
they won't pass through. And the box seems to only convert one signal  
at a time.

Short from buying a recording device that has a built in digital  
tuner (expensive!) does anybody have any a clue how to deal with  
this?  Besides stop watching the talking heads of course....


Katie