A challenging question

Hey Davemon, I would like to do the same thing. Right now all I have is standard audio out with RCA jacks. This output can be controlled with my cable remote which briefly displays an on-screen bar graph.

The best I can offer is hope. The cable TV companies are coming under increased pressure to add HDTV, and ultimately digital TV, to their services. When this happens, they will have to give us new boxes. Hopefully (and this is my wish list!) these new boxes will have component color out, options for HDTV, 1080i and 480p, and of course digital audio out. Even if the digital audio out is only 16/44.1 it will be a vast improvement.

If this is more than a few years down the road, many of us will continue to switch to satellite. However, I feel the cable people will respond before then.

A side note: has anyone ever wondered how good CATV or satellite could be if someone like Pass Labs, Krell, Levinson, Accuphase, Sony or EAD made a high-end cable TV box? I am sure many of us would shell out the extra bucks!

Originally my dCS Delius and Purcell directly fed the amp. An outboard A/ D fed FM and reel to reel to the Purcell so these sources were even up-sampled. Out of curiosity, I moved a Levenson preamp from a second system...eliminated the A/D, fed the Delius to the Levinson then the amp. This is more convenient and the sound improved even tho this is an older preamp. The preamp will stay in the main system until replaced by a major one like BAT 51SE, Ayre K-1x or Levinson 380S. This will provide another major improvement. You might borrow a good preamp to see if this is a viable improvement in your system. Chuck

Might ask your cable company if they have any choices w.r.t. STBs. I know my cable co. locally uses several different brands and there are variations even within brands between different models. One of them might have a digital out.

Not to rub it in but my Time Warner supplied digital cable box has coax digital out. (Scientific Atlanta) It only has digital sound output on digital channels. The local network channels are not digital, only the cable specific channels including HBO. It does improve the sound.