SD not forwarding to HD for some channels

[awdorrin]

A month or so back, Time Warner cable did a complete rearrange of all of the channels on our system (Southern Tier NY, near Binghamton)
It took a couple of days for the channel guide to catch up (in fact I had to temporarily switch the guide to a 'rebuild' configuration that was being offered.)

One of the 'advantages' claimed by Time Warner was that selected channels would automatically forward to HD channels when selected.
This seems to work fine for some channels, but for others, we are getting the SD signal only, which ends up in the middle of the screen with borders on all four sides.

Certain channels were working fine, up until a week or two ago, displaying HD when selected, and now are showing SD. For instance SciFi, Food Network, etc.

I have WMC7 and a Ceton InfiniTV4. I'm not sure if there is a way to manually edit the channel listings and force the HD channel selection.

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the tuning adapter, the Ceton card, or WMC, or what sort of work around there might be. I'm also not sure if there is a way to look at the channel information that the Ceton card or WMC is getting from Time Warner or the Tuning adapter.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[mdavej]

Settings - TV - Edit Channels, then delete all the SD ones.

[awdorrin]

A PDF file describing the new channel line up for my Time Warner area can be found here: Channel Lineup

The channels are no longer listed as 'SD' or 'HD' - the original 'analog' channels are still in the range of 2-99, but all SD digital and HD channels are grouped in different categories above 100.

For instance:

Code: Select all

CBS  2, 1209
Fox  3, 1206
NBC  5, 1203
ABC  6, 1200
SyFy 36, 111
Food Network 56, 162

For the networks, if I tune to 2,3,5,6 or 1209, 1206, 1203, 1200, I get HD
For other channels, like SyFy and Food Network, no matter what I tune to, I get SD.

The way the channel guide is presented, it doesn't say 'SD' or 'HD'.

EDIT: And to make things a tad bit more annoying. When I checked the channels this morning, everything looks to be working properly again...

[barnabas1969]

When they say that it will automatically "forward" to the HD channel, they are talking about their own cable box, not your Media Center PC. See post #2 above.

[jaimeknapp]

Apparently this must vary by region and equipment. In San Antonio with a Ceton itv4 and Cisco TA, both sets of lower and higher number channels show their own tuner source. In my case they are both HD signals if TWC carries that channel in HD and both in SD if they do not carry that channel in HD. On my system, there is no way I can view/record in SD anything that they carry in HD. Whether this routing is done through the TA, or how TWC provisions the CableCard, I have no idea.

It is interesting that connecting that same signal directly to an NTSC tuner, all of the lower order channels appear in SD, for now.

[tipstir]

On the HDTV what does the TV says for those Channels. Some CATV providers don't give you full HD on some of their channels. Where other do. Comcast (HD but not on all channels) and Cox (gives you HD and SD service) did the same thing. Now without them over the air is all HD but some changes still use ABC 720p HD where others use 480i SD. Not everything is true HD 1080i unless it states that through the main TV.

[awdorrin]

Barnabas, perhaps Time Warner is doing something different than what you are used to with Brighthouse. But either the cable card itself, or the Ceton tuner has been selecting the HD channel regardless of whether I choose the SD-analog channel in the 2-99 range, or the digital SD/HD channel in the 100+ range (see the link for the channel guide I provided above, Time Warner no longer differentiates between SD and HD in my area.)

As I posted above, this morning I checked two of the channels in question (SyFy and Food Network) I could tune to either the SD-Analog or the Digital channels and I viewed the station in HD. Tonight, I switched to both SyFy and Food Network, and both were again displaying the SD channel letterboxed in the middle of the screen. (I don't know if its sending 480i or 480p since the PC is configured for 1080p and only displays 1080p)

I rebooted my PC and power cycled the tuning adapter, after WMC started and the tuning adapter stopped blinking, I tuned to the channels in question, and again got HD channels.

I see nothing within WMC that would tell me what channel (ie. frequency/QAM/SDV channel) is being displayed. I don't know if either WMC has a secret sequence to display this information, or if I can get the information using one of Ceton's tools.

As Jamie indicates, this channel selection (IE HD vs SD) is happening with TWC either through the Tuning Adapter or through the cable card. It just seems that something is going on (over the past 3 weeks) where I don't get the HD channels selected properly. (I doubled checked and it looks like TWC switched to this new channel lineup on Tuesday October 22nd, and this has only been happening to me over the past 3 weeks.)

For reference, I also have a standard cable box from Time Warner (on another TV) and I can confirm, when I'm seeing the SD analog/digital channels through WMC/Ceton/Cablecard/TuningAdapter that the cable box is displaying an HD channel on either the analog station and the digital station.

[awdorrin]

After research this some more today, I found out I'm not alone with this problem:

This post on the Time Warner Forums describes what I'm seeing:
http://forums.timewarnercable.com/t5/Pi ... /td-p/8585

I'm not sure what they mean by 'firmware' upgrades (perhaps their tuner?) or by power settings for the tuning adapter.

[awdorrin]

So this problem went away for awhile, and now is back again.

Has anyone encountered this and figured out a way to select the HD channels when the cable company is no longer providing separate SD and HD channels?