Time Warner to add six HD channels to N.E. Wisconsin before end of May

Say it with me.. AMEN!!!!!

Does anyone know if these will all be included in "Free" HD channels or will they be a part of some special HD tier? I hope Time Warner does not start to do this like some of the HD only channles are for DirecTV and Dish.

My guess is that the "Free HD" channels are those with SD counterparts. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going off memory here) the HD Theater tier is for HD-only channels like Universal HD and Mojo.

Wow, this is absolutely amazing. I was just reading today about Comcast offering all of the HD OnDemand and was thinking about calling Time Warner to ask when to expect a new channel or two. I still won’t believe it until I see it, but when they do come though, this will be an amazing addition to our line up and will satisfy my HD cravings for quite some time.

I am an OTA only user. Some of my family have the Dish, others have Directv. I was always a cable subscriber (Charter).

If I was to go with a service right now, it would be the Dish network. They offer a package for $30/mo. that includes all 45 of their non-premium HD channels. No shopping networks or religious channels, only the HD channels we mostly want. My only fear of calling and subscribing is that in 6 months the packagw will change and I will be stuck with a bad deal.

$30/mo for 45 HD only channels is a great deal, especially when I get the locals OTA and would not have to pay the extra for locals.

Bill

Bill:

Do you know if their contract is 12- or 18-months? Just curious. I thought they upped it to 18-months.

My parents have NO contract. Dad paid an extra up front fee and has no contract time (he pays month to month). When they added the second dish for high def locals last week (for free), the installer tried to force him to sign a 2 year agreement. I had warned my dad of this and he refused.

the installer threatened to remove the local HD dish from the roof and Dad told him he did not have and would not accept a time contract as he had paid an additional up fron fee. The installer made a call, apologized and went on his way!

Bill

I'm guessing we'll be seeing these channels Wed or Thurs of next week. But that's just me. I'm pretty sure all of our last new channels (the few and far between) come on those days towards the end of the month. I'd be shocked to see them sooner.

My bet would be on Thursday (the 29th). Time Warner had previously announced that they would discontinue a handful of duplicate feeds from some premium channels on the 29th. Either they'd be freeing up bandwidth there for the new HD channels or they're just giving their techs a good day's worth of work on that day.

Any guesses on whether ESPNews-HD will be on a different HD tier? I ask because ESPNews-SD is currently on the expanded digital tier and not available to everyone so I'm curious as to whether or not this will fall under their "Free HD" or if it'll be put onto their Premium tier, or whether we'll see the creation of another HD tier.

My guess would be it would be part of the free HD, since there is a SD counterpart. When there are more HD networks that have SD counterparts on the higher digital-cable tier, they might section off a separate tier for those, but I would imagine they'd just include it in their free HD tier. It would certainly be a good gesture of goodwill for having to wait so long for additional channels.

I'd bet the rest go on the free HD package as well.

MHD has got to be part of the HD Theater tier, even though it's essentially a MTV/CMT combo channel.

New HD channels are live! TWC updated their online channel lineup last night already to reflect the changes, and the channels were active when I woke this morning! It was like Christmas! The program guide still isn't working for the channels, but that'll come. Discovery HD looks great, Food HD was in stretch-o-vision, and ESPN News wasn't active yet, but I'm sure it'll be there tonight. The biggest surprise was Disney HD, which was airing a Winnie The Pooh and friends CGI cartoon. It was formatted correctly as an orginal 16x9 source and looked great in HD. I flipped to the SD Disney Channel to find out it was a Pan and Scan version. Great job Disney in producing orginal programming in True HD! The only complaint I have is that it would be nice if they re-orderd the channels to make them more user friendly. ESPN News should be next to ESPN and ESPN 2. The premium pay more HD channels should all be on the high side of the HD channels so we don't have to skip over them when using our guide. We could throw FSN HD as well as its info channel up there too as it's only on a few times a week. WPT and its 5 channels should also be after the regular HD channels as they too aren't always active and rarely show HD. Despite this, I'm thrilled to see new channels and I can't wait to watch my favorite Discovery shows in HD!

I'm new to HD...just got my first HDTV 2 weeks ago and picked up my 8300HD from Time Warner a couple of days later...was told by the person at Time Warner about these channels being added this week and that more would be added in June and still more in July for something like 40 total (I'm guessing that number includes the Pay channels like HBOHD, etc). Good to see that they're adding HD channels because I really didn't want to go to the trouble of putting up a dish.

Anyway, I'm still figuring out the 8300HD and I've noticed a number of channels in the 1500s- most appear to be duplicates of lower channels and some just plan don't work (was hoping 1506 would be WGN in HD, but instead it just shows "channel not currently available"). Anyone know anything about the 1500 channels?

I'm glad Time Warner is adding HD channels too, as I am not able to do either satellite service at my current apartment. I think they've worked out the kinks of their new switched digital video platform which should allow them to roll out more channels. Time Warner corporate has HD carriage agreements already with a good number of channels, so there should be no reason they can't roll out more now. From what I've heard, there will be new channel rollouts at the end of June and July, but I hope it turns out to be more channels than I've been told they're doing.

There are a number of channels in the 1500's. They're not "officially" listed on the website, so I'm guessing they're just "digital" SD versions of the local channels. I often watch WLUK on 1500 because I think it looks a little better than 12. I don't think they have any meaningful reason to exist there, but they just do.

Does anyone know if it is possible to get a second HD box from Time Warner without having to pay the rental fee? I would love to be able to have multiple tv's able to get all the HD channels but I really don't want to have to pay for a second box.

There is a second lease fee on another box.

I did that for a while myself a couple years ago before I got my Media Center where I had a SD DVR and an HD DVR (so I wouldn't fill my HD DVR full on non-HD stuff). I'm not sure if they charge a second DVR fee on a second box or not though.

I just got off the phone with TWC because MHD was not active on my cable boxes. At the end of the conversation I asked about future HD channels and was told TLC-HD was on deck for June and Animal Planet-HD is arriving in July.

How about getting some real HD channels..WGN-HD, WLUK HD, Big 10 Network HD and NFL Network-HD?

I'm still waiting for USA and Sci Fi HD channels, that's been bugging me for a long time.