How do I Connect Cable to My TV?

The easiest way to get your TV connected to cable is to have, for a fee, a local cable technician come to your home and install it. That may seem obvious, but with the advent of digital set-top boxes--that look a lot like cable TV boxes--which nearly everybody must have to receive network programming on their analog television sets, there might be confusion as to what "cable" is. For cable TV programming, you must subscribe to a cable provider, which will send out a technician.

If all the necessary cable equipment is already installed on the exterior of your home or apartment but you still need to modify your interior to be cable-ready, you can avoid calling a technician and do the work yourself. Find where coaxial cable enters the home from the outside cable interface box. Here you'll see where the cable ends or where its been split by using a splitter. If the line has already been split and you see additional lines heading in different directions, there's a good chance that you have cable jacks already installed and wired. If not, then you'll need to decide what TVs you want to receive cable and wire RG-6 coaxial cable to cable jacks that you'll install behind those TVs.

Once cable jacks are installed and wired, you either need a cable set-top box provided by your cable operator, or a cable-ready TV. If you have a cable box, run coaxial cable from the cable jack behind the TV to the cable jack behind the cable box, which should be labeled "IN" or "ANT." Then run coaxial cable from the other cable box jack labeled "OUT" or "OUT TO TV" to the TV cable jack that's usually labeled "ANT" or "VHF/UHF" on the back of the TV. Your TV should receive cable as soon as you subscribe to programming from your cable operator.

New technologies, such as the cable card, give alternatives to old-fashioned coaxial cable connections. The cable card works like a miniature cable box about the size of a stack of credit cards that fits into slots built into compatible TVs or other devices such as DVRs. You obtain a cable card after subscribing to programming from a cable provider, at which point you either plug it into your TV, or, if your TV isn't compatible, you can purchase a card-compatible cable box from an electronics outlet that you'll connect to the TV as described earlier. If you prefer to use something other than coaxial cable, HDMI cable is an alternative that should be used for high definition programming.