Is Time Warner Cable's ultimate aim to make everyone get a converter to watch anything on cable television? Well, it certainly seems so. Just months after removing channel 77 (in October) and 20 (in November), they've now set their sights on channel 19. Sure, it's only ACC programming, but who's to say next time it won't be something you actually watch?
However, Time Warner appears to be willing to work with its customers. (Maybe it has something to do with the fallout they got after the KXAN thing.) Per the same page, Time Warner will provide one converter box per household free of charge. Hopefully that means not just free pickup but also no monthly $7 charge. If so, viewers who lost the other aforementioned channels could conceivably get them back. (The return of 20 would be great for the 5-year-old, since KLRU2 is not available on other providers in my area.)
Stay tuned.
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4 comments:
I personally believe that their main goal IS to force everyone to have a cable box. They have tied revenue streams to these boxes in the forms of ppv and ads within the guides so they believe that EVERYONE must have one. I do not but do have cable cards to receive HD without one and am basically being forced to get a cable box to get many channels because of an almost illegal use of the spectrum with something called switched digital video (SDV). Time Warner, and most cable companies, cannot see the forest for the trees and insist upon bullying their customers for every last nickel and dime available. blech to them.
Yes; I had an argument with some kid trying to sell me U-Verse a week or two ago who insisted that the upcoming analog->digital conversion meant my Grande service would end unless I bought/leased a digital box from them, so why not switch now? (I had mentioned the irritant of a cable box as one of the reasons I wasn't ready to seriously consider AT&T).
Get thee central. 3, count em, 3 cable or cable-like choices means you can at least switch to the lesser evil from time to time.
Time Warner is an evil company. Unfortunately I have them for internet. As for cable, we don't have cable, but rather get our digital signal free through a HD antenna. Dropping cable was the best thing we have done. I suddenly found all of this "time" I lost. It is a shame they are using the conversion to confuse customers.
Those analog public access channels suck up tons of bandwidth and almost nobody watches them. If TWC can move those to digital and also use SDV it frees up valuable bandwidth for more HD channels (and PPV and on-demand video and higher speed internet access, etc).
I bet TWC has calculated that it's cheaper to give out free converter boxes to all basic cable subscribers than to continue to waste bandwidth with analog. They are just doing the slowplay in order to get most people to switch before they make the free announcement.
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