Time Warner Cable engineers don’t seem that bright to me
I’ve lived in NYC almost my entire life. In fact, I’ve only lived in Manhattan, and all within a 20 block stretch on the east side. As a result, I’ve been watching television from one provider, through all it’s incarnations, for about 25-30 years.
About once a year, Time Warner Cable (TWC) rejiggers it’s channel lineup for various reasons. The reasons sometimes include putting “like” channels near each other, promoting new channels (the lower they are, the more people will find them), and moving poorly performing channels out of the way (did you know that WNBC has their own weather channel? #161 in Manhattan).
Normally, I adjust to these changes in a few weeks, and move on with my life. However, sometimes the changes come too quickly and other times they just don’t make sense. Both happened in the last two and half months.
About two months ago, TWC rejiggered their HD channels in an effort to mimic their SD counterparts. The HD channels are in the 700 range, but for some reason, a lot of them did not line up with their SD versions. For example, Discovery was on channel 18 while Discovery HD was on channel 706. HBO was on channel 80 while HBO HD was on 701. They got ESPN HD correct since the SD version is on 28 while the HD version is on 728.
After the rejiggering, I was a happy camper. I no longer needed to have brain space taken up by multiple channels that didn’t make sense. If I wanted Discovery HD, I easily remembered that the original was on 18 so the HD was on 718. Same thing with HBO — 80 & 780. Life was good.
That was, until October 15th. TWC, in their infinite wisdom, rejiggered a few channels again. Look what moved…Discovery. From 18 to 66. Did they move Discovery HD from 718 to 766? Of course not…that would make sense.
In all fairness, Discovery HD has a completely different channel with different shows than Discovery and is not just an HD version of it, but still, I hate having to try and commit more information into my brain…it’s already full which means that something has to go before I can put something new in there. The sad thing is that I have no idea what I just lost. It might have been important.
Another wonderful side effect of this move was that somehow TW forgot to inform Tivo. So, instead of Dirty Jobs and Man Vs. Wild, I have a DVR full of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Queer Eye (which I like just not as much as Dirty Jobs,) and some show about Kathy Griffith
I actually got a letter from TWC in the mail explaining the changes, and that they were due to requirements contained in the new contracts with content providers (i.e., USA, owned by NBC is now 16 – I assume it’s because when they re-upped their contract, they demanded to be in the first 20 channels). In other words, they’re not being arbitrary (at least this time).
If you’ve got a digital cable box with the onscreen guide (I’ve got the DVR version) it automatically updates your favorite channels and DVR programming.
Lets not talk about TWC in HD. Their current program lineup is one of the worst in the cable/satellite industry.