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May
22

TWC To Rollout Channel Reassignments June 8

The previously mentioned Time Warner Cable channel realignment is coming to the Raleigh area on June 8. From that point on all channels above 100 will be reassigned to numbers based on the following categories:

  • 100s – Local Programming – all OTA channels
  • Lower 200s – Kids & Family
  • Upper 200s – Learning & Discovery, Faith & Inspiration
  • Lower 300s – Entertainment
  • Upper 300s – Home & Leisure, Shopping
  • Lower 400s – News & Info
  • Upper 400s – Music (not Music Choice)
  • 500s – Sports
  • 600s – Movies
  • 700s – Premium Movies, PPV
  • 800s – International
  • 900s – Music Choice
  • 1000s – HD version of the exact same channel with 3-digits

This will be a breeze once you learn a few key channels: CBS, FOX, NBC, and ABC are on 105, 150, 117, and 111. Their HD channels are 1000 higher on 1105, 1150, 1117, and 1111. ESPN is on 500, then ESPN2, ESPNU. Fox Sports Carolinas is on 508. HGTV and Food Network are on 350 and 351, respectively. Palladia is 1453. Yep! That pretty much does it 😉

TWC

  • Tom Woolf

    Are the 0-99 (Basic tier) staying the same? I have a feeling that if they go, I will need boxes for the older TVs I have in my kitchen and bedroom. TW stands a good chance of losing me if they make me spend another $150+/yr to watch TV before bed or at breakfast…

  • Dana

    No. 0-99 are staying the same…for now. Take a look at the pie charts on this page:
    http://www.geektonic.com/2009/11/second-digital-transition.html

    What you’ll see is that in a typical cable TV offering, only 18% of the channels offered are analog, yet those analog channels are taking around 60% of the bandwidth.

    Time Warner and most other cable companies are trying to mitigate this bandwidth crunch by offering new channels via SDV (Switched Digital Video). However, with mounting pressures to offer more channels, 3DTV, and more internet bandwidth, cable executives are eying the analog channels and looking for ways to get rid of these hogs.

    By law they cannot require you to buy additional equipment in order to receive their basic service. So, what will end up happening is that the 0-99 channels will eventually get switched from analog to digital. If you have a TV that only has an analog tuner (generally most of the old SD tube TVs), it would no longer get these channels after the switch.

    Therefore, the cable companies are going to have to provide some type of box, probably dumbed-down (no higher channels, on-demand, perhaps no guide), which can handle these newly converted-to-digital channels. Because of that law, they will have to give you the dumber box for free. It will be an inconvenience in bedrooms, kitchens, etc, and you’ll basically lose your remote control for these TVs, but the additional bandwidth gains will greatly improve the cable service without having to rewire the whole city.

  • ReasonX

    It took me a while to get around to noticing it, but before the switch I was able to set up favorite channels and only see those in the guide, thereby not having to deal with shopping channels or anything else I didn’t care to browse. After June 8th, I no longer have that option (other than to hit the FAV button repeatedly).

    I like the new channel organization, but I hate that they used it as a way to silently drop features I’ve come to like. Hello U-Verse!

    • http://www.danamccall.com Dana

      ReasonX, Maestro has always been terrible, and does an awful job at presenting TWC’s service. Even the new Samsung boxes are crashing left and right (so it isn’t just Scientific Atlanta hardware that is buggy). If you had a Windows Media Center setup with CableCARD your outlook on TWC’s service would be drastically different. You would particularly like the feature that allows you to setup custom guide listings. We have a guide of channels that I like, one that my daughter likes, and one that my wife likes, in addition to the stock guides of “All”, “Sports”, “HD”, and “Movies”. During the Olympics I set up a guide that only showed the channels that carried the games.

      Now is not the time to make the move to Media Center, however. Wait until Ceton’s quad-tuner CableCARD tuner hits the market (“sometime” this month…)

  • ReasonX

    Thanks for the advice, Dana. I have the geek cred and software to set up Windows Media Center, but I am not too familiar with the CableCARD technology. Does TWC service just work with it if you have the hardware, or is there more to the setup? Any drawbacks?

    I’m still considering U-Verse for price, service, and some pretty nice options that work well for my family…

  • Dana

    It doesn’t “just work”, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s like a car that you just love to tinker with. What you’d do it:
    1) buy a Ceton internal CableCARD tuner (when they are available – hopefully within 4wks). Install it and get it working with the in-the-clear QAM channels (5.1, 5.2, 11.1…)
    2) Call TWC and order a CableCARD and two SDV tuning adapters. They will require a truck-roll, which costs ~$50. The Card rental is something like $3/mo.
    3) They will send a dolt who has no idea how this setup works. You’ll just need to make sure they pair the CableCARD with tier direct phone line. Past that, just get them out of the house because they are wasting your time. Once it all works:

    Benefits: Unlimited storage and backup of recorded shows, the best interface on the planet, a super guide, fast skipping, extension of 4 premium tuners throughout the house, record/watch 4 channels at once, Netflix 10ft interface, playback of all mp3s, photos, and home movies, transfer of basic cable shows to other computers…with plug-ins you can do remote scheduling, commercial skipping, hulu integration, Vonage VM playback, popup Caller ID, playback of bittorrent downloads, offload to iPhone/Android, and more!

    Drawbacks: Does not get any on-demand channels, Netflix and Hulu only work on the Media Center’s TV, not on extenders, stability issues, complicated setup.

    Your subscription to “digital cable” (in order to get the CableCARD) includes rental of a standard box, so we have that connected to the TV also so that we can occasionally get to on-demand channels.

  • Tom Woolf

    Dana,

    Thank you for that information. It is nice to know my perfectly functional TVs will not become obsolete soon.

    The cable company can make money off of this deal, though… If they do ditch the analog signals and hand out dummied-down boxes, we will lose our ability to use our TV remotes. TW can simply offer remotes for those boxes at a “low” $3-6/mo, eventually making back the expenditures on the boxes.

Posted by Dana on May 22, 2010 | Tags: TV . | ( 7 ) Comments

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