Time Warner Cable is convinced subscribers are confused about the enormous number of channels that occupy today’s cable dials.  With today’s rapid growth in HD channels, the cable company is introducing some dramatic channel realignments for its customers in the Carolinas.

Next month, customers in the Triangle will join Time Warner Cable’s Common Digital Lineup, a project to align channel assignments throughout the two states.  When complete, all digital channels will be located in the same place on the dial throughout the Carolinas.  The company is also switching to a theme-based channel lineup.  Each category will have its respective channels grouped together.  Among them: news, general entertainment, sports, children’s programming, music, and movies.

For those in the northeastern states, this doesn’t represent anything new for the cable company — Time Warner Cable systems in New York, for example, have grouped digital channels into categories for years.

But the Carolinas realignment does make it considerably easier to locate HD channels, which will be aligned with their standard definition counterparts.  For example, CNN will soon be found throughout the Carolinas on channel 400.  Finding CNN HD becomes effortless – just put a “1” in front of the channel number — 1400.  The Disney Channel is on channel 200.  Disney Channel HD is easy enough to find — it’s now on channel 1200.  Even local channels are easier to deal with.  In Greensboro, for example, WXII, the NBC affiliate, will be on channel 120 for standard definition viewing or channel 1120 for HD viewing.

Complete channel lineup guides for the Carolinas are available from Time Warner Cable’s website.

[flv width=”432″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/News 14 Carolina In Depth Melissa Buscher TWC digital lineup changes 3-2010.flv[/flv]

Time Warner Cable’s House Organ, News 14 Carolina, delivers plenty of airtime to spokeswoman Melissa Buscher, who gushes about the channel alignment changes completed in Charlotte this past March.  (3 minutes)

The new lineup will take effect for North Carolina customers on the following dates:

The new channel lineup will be grouped as follows:

• 100’s – Local Broadcasters & Local Programming
• 200’s – Kids & Family, Learning & Discovery, Faith & Inspiration
• 300’s – Entertainment, Home & Leisure, Shopping
• 400’s – News & Information, Music
• 500’s – Sports
• 600’s – Movies
• 700’s – Premiums, Pay-Per-View Events
• 800’s – International
• 900’s – Music Choice
• 1000’s – On Demand
• 1100 and above- High Definition

Meanwhile, a lot of other Time Warner customers would prefer to share their continued displeasure with Time Warner’s “new and improved” program guide and DVR configuration menus.  Mystro Navigator has mystified a large number of customers who can’t stand the software and don’t understand why Time Warner radically changed it in the first place.

One Raleigh customer complains the software upgrade turned his DVR’s fast forward and rewind buttons into mud.  The upgrade dropped the 4x fast forward option which rapidly scanned through recorded programming.  Fast forwarding through commercials has become a nightmare because the box automatically rewinds about 10-20 seconds behind the point where the customer stopped fast-forwarding.

Buffalo and Rochester, New York customers have also given the software a hostile reception.  Some customers in Buffalo have canceled Time Warner Cable over the upgrade and switched to Verizon FiOS. In Rochester, a few residents have noted it has become much more difficult to manage manual recordings or setting the DVR up to record series properly.  The most common complaints:

• No apparent “jump to end” in playback
• Fast forward and rewind are not accurate
• Finding shows by title is laborious at best
• Recording shows and series has become needlessly complex by the changed menu structure
• No apparent 4x fast forward and reverse
• Program descriptions are heavily truncated on DVR recordings
• Erasing and managing recorded shows often drops you out of the DVR menu
• DVR recording is not consistent
• Configuring Navigator to work with HD sets is confusing for the uninitiated
• Extremely sluggish channel changing, responsiveness

Dealing with Navigator and the Time Warner Cable remote control, especially in the dark, should be an Olympic event.  One Buffalo resident has thrown up his hands:

Time Warner reminds me of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Both have severe technology handicaps. I watched the governor get fired on The Apprentice because he couldn’t use a cell phone or send an email or use the simplest technology.

Time Warner can’t seem to design a clicker that works. Mine has 63 buttons and looks like part of a 767 cockpit console. Hello? All I want is channel, volume and on/off.

The Time Warner remote doesn’t have a single on/off button — it has two – a ‘system’ and a “power” button. The engineer who designed that monstrosity should be dragged through the streets by a mob of angry senior citizens who must fumble with that thing every day.

Some tips have been circulating informally among Time Warner Cable engineers about how to deal with Navigator’s temperamental behavior:

Navigator Guide Data:

1. Newly installed or downloaded guides can take up to 24 hours for all seven days of guide data to populate. In many cases, new installs may only go out by three days until a full 24 hours have completed.
2. When Setting Up Series Recording for your first week with Navigator: (and even thereafter if you can help it) DO NOT DELETE SHOWS IN THE MIDDLE OF RECORDING THEM! Let Navigator do at least one complete recording of a series. If you need to delete a series, do it through the Series Manager, but before the recording starts. If you delete a series in the middle of recording it, Navigator will think it made an error, and will keep looking out for more episodes to record of that series.
3. Navigator needs to see AT LEAST ONE instance of a series for the populated guide data to be able to record it. Remember, under Record Series With Options you can set up on what channel(s) the series should record, the number of episodes to keep, and set series priorities.

[flv width=”480″ height=”340″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Time Warner Cable Dealing with Navigator 5-2010.flv[/flv]

Time Warner Cable produced these two videos to assist Navigator customers trying to understand how to record programming or set up their televisions to properly display cable programming.  (3 minutes)

City by city, Comcast is continuing its quest to make the switch to digital cable for an increasing portion of  its cable programming lineup.  Although the majority of subscribers will encounter letters from Comcast switching only a portion of the analog cable lineup, it’s a safe bet Comcast is looking to an all-digital future sooner or later.

Coming less than a year after the switch to digital broadcast television, the march to digital cable is causing confusion for subscribers who don’t understand the difference.

Analog cable television has been around for more than 20 years in most American cities.  It’s the kind of cable television that doesn’t usually need a converter box on top of the TV.  Just plug the cable line into the back of your television set, let the TV find and map available channels, and you can use your standard TV remote to enjoy basic or enhanced basic cable television.  Of course, if you subscribe to premium channels like HBO or Showtime, a box is required to descramble the encrypted signal.

Cable operators began launching “digital cable” in the 1990s, expanding the lineup of programming with hundreds of new channels that are compressed into a digital format, with a half dozen or more digital channels fitting in the same space used by just one analog channel.  Space on the cable line is getting increasingly crowded as cable systems launch new HD channels, support telephone service, and expand broadband service and speeds.

To make room, several of those old school analog channels have to go… digital.  If you already have a set top cable box — you probably won’t even notice the changeover.  But if you don’t have one of those boxes in your home, and your television doesn’t support CableCARD technology, Comcast has some bad news for you.  Sooner or later, you’ll either have to get a set top box or lose an increasing number of channels on your cable dial.

Comcast's digital adapter doesn't support HD channels

Comcast’s digital cable expansion is their solution to the traffic jam on their cable lines.  Some other cable companies take a different approach.  Knowing that many customers hate cable boxes, they’ve left analog channels alone, instead transmitting digital channels only to those homes actually watching them.  If nobody in your neighborhood is watching Current or Fox Business News, why waste the space to send those signals down the line to… nobody.  Time Warner Cable doesn’t for many of their digital channels.  If one lives in an eclectic viewing neighborhood, there are problems with this approach.  Potentially, if enough homes want to watch these lesser-viewed networks, and Time Warner runs out of the space it sets aside to carry a certain number of these channels, the subscriber will see a video busy signal — a message stating the channel is temporarily not available, at least until someone nearby changes channels, making room for the network you want to watch.

Comcast's digital solution is a problem for those who hate "the box" for weaving a rat's nest of cables behind one's television.

In most communities, Comcast will provide up to three digital adapter boxes at no charge, if you install them yourself on each television in your home.  Additional boxes are usually $1.99 per month.  That’s fine if you are still using an older television set and don’t care about HDTV programming — the digital adapters Comcast provides don’t support HD.  If you do want HD channels, you’ll need Comcast’s traditional converter box, which runs about $7 a month per television, or a CableCARD, if your television supports it.  Comcast also has elaborate instructions for customers with multiple TV inputs to support both standard and high definition signals, some through the digital adapter, others not, but it requires a lot of cables.

Customers who loathe boxes and don’t want to pay for them are upset by all of the changes, and either must cope with the new box, or gradually lose more and more analog channels as the conversion continues.  Broadcast basic customers getting only local channels from Comcast are unaffected by all of this, at least for now.  Owners of modern HD television sets aren’t impressed either — their sets, capable of receiving QAM digital cable channels without a box are no help because Comcast encrypts its digital cable lineup in many areas.

But the company still thinks of the project as a service upgrade for its customers, even dubbing it Project Cavalry on their company blog. When one customer wondered why the new equipment wasn’t available in his area yet, a company blogger responded, “We will not be “cherry picking” … all our systems will get the benefits. The Comcast Cavalry just hasn’t swept through your area yet, stay tuned.”

When asked why the devices don’t support HD channels, the response:

The DTA was designed as a low-end, basic device to do one thing and one thing only … convert digital signals back to analog for display on an analog TV. That’s all, no higher end outputs, no VOD, no HD, no interactive guide. Keeping the device simple as described is what kept the price down enough that we can provide so much free equipment to our customers. Also, the RF output makes it compatible with the absolute maximum number of TVs, which is critical to the program. As a digital device, however, it does offer dramatically-improved picture quality over analog even through the RF output.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast DTA Tutorial.flv[/flv]

Watch Comcast’s tutorial on installing their Digital Adapter. (4 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Digital Migration.flv[/flv]

Watch a coast-to-coast series of news reports detailing the Comcast transition to digital, starting with the message customers see on their now-missing favorite channels. (15 minutes)