• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Raleigh, N.C., Time Warner Cable Customers Get All-Digital Programming

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

Jul. 12--Time Warner Cable has upgraded the video and sound quality on about 70 channels received by digital-cable customers in the Triangle to better compete with satellite television.

Last week, the company's local digital-cable customers became the first Time Warner Cable subscribers in the country to receive all-digital programming. Time Warner expects to roll out the service systemwide by the end of next year.

Not all digital cable customers will notice the upgrade.

The improved signal should be most noticeable to customers with high-definition or large-screen televisions. Patrick J. Hourigan, vice president of engineering and technology for Time Warner, said customers who have a TV set larger than a 27-incher will see the difference.

Cable companies across the country have begun upgrading their digital-cable offerings to all-digital service. One of the reasons is to match satellite television, which long has boasted of 100-percent digital signals.

Nationwide, cable-TV subscriber growth nationwide has stagnated, but Time Warner's Triangle customer base has continued to grow. Time Warner's Raleigh division has about 497,000 subscribers in 16 counties -- up about 4 percent since January 2004.

About 40 percent of Time Warner's Triangle customers receive digital cable. Only they were affected by the upgrade.

Before the improvements, Time Warner's digital-cable service offered a combination of digital and analog channels. The analog channels included the 70 channels also available to subscribers of standard service -- popular cable channels such as CNN and Comedy Central as well as the local affiliates of the broadcast networks. Now Time Warner is simulcasting those analog channels in digital -- which improves the video and audio reception -- for its digital subscribers. Nondigital cable subscribers continue to receive analog signals.

The changeover wasn't glitch-free, however.

On Monday, the cable company's regional division sent a letter to subscribers with digital video recorders, or DVRs, informing them that series of shows that they had programmed their machines to record on channels up through channel 98 would have to be reprogrammed. The problem only affects shows that have been programmed through the "Series Recording" function on DVRs, so it doesn't affect, for example, individual shows that customers may have set up to record. Nor are shows on channels 100 and above affected.

Richard T. Evans, 58, a Time Warner subscriber who lives in northwest Raleigh, was upset about the problem. "It took me years to get [the DVR] customized the way I wanted it," said Evans, who records dozens of shows each week.

On the plus side, customers with DVRs will be able to record and store up to 10 additional hours of programming on their machines, giving them a total capacity of up to 50 hours because of the upgrade. The reason: digital signals consume less disk space than analog signals.

-----

To see more of The News & Observer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsobserver.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

TWX,

Source: The News & Observer

More News in this Category