You can find anything you want on the internet. If you had provided the Model Number of your television, we could have helped you by googling your TV's model number, etc.

Therefore, we have to be more general. Generally, the answer depends on one thing -- does the TV have a DTV [digital television] tuner. It is possible that an older LCD television has only an analog tuner, which would make it the same as an old, traditional TV except for the TV screen.

The manual might say "Digital Ready," which is a marketing term used by such old LCD televisions. Un-abbreviated, Digital Ready means that you have to add a DTV tuner. At the time these TVs were made, there were no DTV tuners, so you were preparing for the future.

Today, yesterday's future is now. The $40 government coupons can be put towards a digital TV set-top box that is a digital TV tuner. All convert the digital signals from an antenna to analog outputs on Channel 3 or 4, which you can connect to your TV with a coax cable, and then tune your TV to Channel 3 or 4.

The $40 to $60 set-top boxes take a perfectly high-resolution digital TV signal, and convert it to an old fashioned, mundane analog TV signal. Boxes in this price range (and all that are covered by the coupon) do NOT offer a digital output, which would offer advantages like improved clarity and higher resolution (more and finer lines that compose the picture).

If that were my situation, I would find out the maximum resolution my digital-ready TV were capable of displaying (such as 720 or 1080 lines) and I would make sure I got a set-top box whose output [to the television] [numerically] matches the TVs resolution. That will mean something NOT covered by the coupon program, and much more costly. If you want to watch digital TV is all its glory, it will be worth it.

Newer LCD TVs that include [internal] digital tuners will have manuals that mention "Tuner: NTSC, ATSC, QAM." These are true DTVs [Digital Televisions].

Interpretation: NTSC is old-fashioned analog; ATSC is the new, free, over-the-air-to-your-antenna digital broadcasts, and QAM is an unscrambled Cable-TV signal.

Regarding QAM, you would only be able to take advantage of the QAM capabilities of a digital television if you have Cable TV service. In that case, you might stick the Cable into your digital television, and see if your Cable TV company is delivering any unscrambled QAM signals that a digital TV can receive, direct off the cable without a Cable TV box.

However, for the purposes of this conversation, your question about digital broadcasts, we're mostly intereseted in ATSC.

If your television's manual says your television has a DTV tuner, then all you have to do is figure out how to switch your TV from its Analog tuner to its Digital tuner. That will be just a few clicks of the remote control to switch to the Digital tuner, and then another couple of clicks to get your TV to "search" for digital TV signals [perhaps called "Autotune"] -- where the TV goes through the whole TV band and "saves" digital TV channels that it detects. When the search procedure is completed, you can just hit the Channel Up or Channel Down buttons to scroll through the saved channels.

And, if you don't have the manual for your television anymore, then get the Model Number from some tag glued to your TV in a hidden location. Google the Model Number; maybe the manual is available as a free download, or is at least available for a few bucks.

Also, perhaps now that you have an idea what functions you're looking for in your TV, you might not need a manual to determine whether your TV has a digital tuner or not. Does Autotune only find Analog signals? If you switch the "input" to Digital TV, does that lead you to an Autotune for digital signals? or only a dead-end?

Best luck,

-Neil-

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