It finally happened

[Jeffhs]

I have Time Warner cable, but with no box (cable connects directly to my flat screen). TW moved several channels to the digital tier (Travel Channel, ShopNBC, Speed, TruTV) some time ago, leaving the rest of the cable channels where they are, even though the company claims to have converted all of its systems to all-digital, with no analog signals whatsoever on the cable any longer.

I find this extremely difficult to believe. The only digital channels still on my level of cable service (Standard) are the broadcast stations; the rest of the cable channels are still analog NTSC, so TW is definitely not fully digital yet. The digital channels show up on my TV's channel indicator as HD channels, but I do not notice much of a difference between HD and standard definition -- so I watch the network stations' SD feeds most of the time. Even WGN America is NTSC except for their nine p.m. newscast, which is in fact broadcast in HD. I can't help wondering why that station doesn't broadcast entirely in 720p HD; maybe it does in the Chicago area over WGN-TV channel 9, but the national feed is obviously NTSC, except, as I said, for the newscast. However, I have a feeling that the news is shown on the national feed in NTSC analog. This shouldn't be an issue for people living outside the Chicago area, as that newscast is, after all, for that area and is of no interest to out-of-town viewers; I have often wondered why cable systems outside metro Chicago do not black out the newscast, replacing it with local programming. I asked a representative at Time Warner about this last year and was told that the cable company must carry WGN America (except for local sports blackouts) in its entirety and, as such, cannot black out any other part of the station's programming, including -- yup, you guessed it -- WGN News at 9 p.m.


The only way I could get true HD on my flat screen would be if I rented a cable box from Time Warner (which offers free HD service), and I'm not about to do that for at least two reasons. One, the rental fee for cable boxes has gone up (from $5 per month to $8.50), and two, I don't see what the big deal is about high-definition TV anyway, as I have a 19" flat screen. Unless you have a large screen (30" and up), the high-definition effect may not be noticeable; in fact, someone here in this forum (don't recall whom at the moment) mentioned some time ago that the HD effect in fact is not that noticeable on a 19" screen unless you sit no more than three feet (!) from it. My TV is a good ten feet away from my easy chair, so of course I'm not seeing in HD the few network shows I still watch (though the picture on every channel is much better than NTSC analog ever was). Since my DVD player and VCR are connected to the TV via an RF modulator and via a coax cable, respectively (I don't use the direct audio/video inputs on the back of the set), I'm not seeing my Netflix rentals and personal DVDs/VHS tapes in HD either. The reason I do not use the direct inputs on the set is that I do not have a remote control that switches inputs (my GE universal does have an input select button, but for some reason it doesn't work with my system), and I don't want to get up from the chair to switch them manually.