okay, i'm confused...i currently pay $69.94 (before tax/fees) for "basic" cable, standard RR, and "digital cable equipment"

i got one of those $5/month-for-12-month DVR offers from TWC and figured that even though i don't particularly care about a DVR, my wife does and for $5/month, i'm cool with it

i called, though, and they said i'd have to upgrade to digital cable in order to get the promotion (for an extra $14.95/month)...WTF is digital cable in this case? the woman on the phone told me that i'm currently only getting 78 channels plus the music channels because i have basic cable...but everything i watch is channel 1100+ and quite obviously digital

i do not get extra digital cables like history channel international or green HD or science HD or any of those other channels it tells me i can pay $6.95 or $11.95 month more for

so...should they be charging me more? am i getting "free" digital cable now? i didn't want to argue because i don't want to pay more if i am, by chance, getting something for nothing

10/19/2011 6:38:45 PM

Nope, they're right. Basic cable is a lower tier plan than Digital cable. Digital cable is the default plan they typically offer, most people probably aren't even familiar with the basic cable plan since they try to get everybody into Digital Cable (or better) plans? Just like you said, if you want any HD channels or DVR or anything, you have to have a digital cable plan, which is another reason fewer people do the basic cable plan, even though it has most channels people care about and is slightly less expensive


I think they have an even lower plan than basic cable too, where you just get the major broadcast channels. But it's even less known than basic cable and I think it's even slightly more expensive than basic cable for some reason

[Edited on October 19, 2011 at 6:53 PM. Reason : also, their use of the word digital is mostly a branding choice, not a distinction of analog vs dig.]

10/19/2011 6:47:31 PM

I would almost bet that the basic plan allows you to get a handful of HD via unencrypted QAM. With suddenlink, I just have internet and can pull them.

This may or may not be the result of previously having cable service and the cost of doing a truck roll to install a filter wasn't justified.

10/19/2011 6:55:49 PM

^ that was true for me a few years ago when I still had cable. I also had the basic cable plan for a while (used my PC for DVR so didn't need Digital plan). I've heard since then that they are moving more and more of the unencrypted QAM channels over to encrypted (though I think there is some law that says broadcast channels have to stay unencrypted)

10/19/2011 6:59:38 PM

Yeah, these are definitely the local broadcasts. Maybe Versus? Or some other nonsense shit that I never watch.

10/19/2011 7:03:20 PM

Quote :

"also, their use of the word digital is mostly a branding choice, not a distinction of analog vs dig"

ah, well that's annoying

i like my handful of channels...i don't even feel like i'm missing out on anything...BUT AM I?

[Edited on October 19, 2011 at 9:10 PM. Reason : also, thanks for y'all's input]

10/19/2011 9:10:40 PM

Theres the basic package and the digital "tier" package. The difference is primarily the channels. It used to be you got the basic package as analog cable and if you wanted digitial tier it came with a digital box because theres not enough channel space to do all those digitial channels over analog.

With analog cable they're essentially broadcasting every channel at once all the time. Each channel requires X amount of signal space. More channels means more frequency space needs to be allocated. Since there is a limit to the range available it means theres a limit to the number of channels available. Digital cable solves this problem. With digital cable the digital tuner has a cable modem that connects to an upstream ip device. The video and guide info is delivered over ip. The great thing about that is you need a fixed amount of frequency space on the line since you only need to deliver the channel being watched at that moment. So you essentially remove the limit on number of video channels available

Now days even if you get the basic tier package they'll give you a digital box. This is because they want to move everyone, including basic tier subscribers, to digital delivery. Once they move everyone in an area to digital they can shut off the analog channels entirely. This frees up a massive amount of reseved signal space for other things to be delivered over digital (internet, cable, phone). They can then A) increase the number of subscribers they can host on each node and/or B) increase the amount of bandwidth available for video delivery/internet.

there are more details than that but the tl;dr is: digital cable is long run much cheaper than analog cable. b/c of this cable companies are moving everyone to digital cable (not digital "tier"), including basic tier subscribers.

[Edited on October 19, 2011 at 9:34 PM. Reason : a]

10/19/2011 9:34:25 PM

Quote :

"though I think there is some law that says broadcast channels have to stay unencrypted) "

I would love to find this law - currently I cannot get ABC

10/19/2011 9:53:13 PM