Time Warner Officially Supports Windows 7 with Cable Card

As some of you may know, I am a Time Warner customer that has to live with a lot of Switch Digital Video (SDV).  I get letters all the time from Time Warner informing me of the next batch of channels that they are going to put behind the dread veil of SDV.

Well as I opened the latest letter I noticed something different.  Instead of just talking about Tivo’s and “other” cable card devices, they were now calling out by name Tivo, Moxi, and Windows 7 Media Center.

Could the days of calling Time Warner and saying “Yes I have a Tivo.  Please bring out a cable card.” now be over??  It looks like Media Center is no longer the illegitimate cable card child anymore.

Check out the scans of the letter below.

Time Warner Cuts to New Lineup Today

Well today is the day that Time Warner Cable will start to roll out their new channel lineup in the Charlotte, NC area.  My house sits right in the first wave.  I checked this morning before I left for the day job and the old line-up was still working. I thought they would have done the cut over in the middle of the night but it looks like they have not.  Unfortunately I do not have a cable box to verify so I will have to rely on other family members to see if their lineup has changed.

I also checked Zap2It’s website and it looks like they are ready too.  I have been wondering if they would be ready on time and how they were planning on handling the update.  It looks like they have just created an entirely new Time Warner Cable Digital lineup for my area instead of updating the existing one.  So I will need to run the TV setup and choose the new lineup and I should be good to go.  Then Zap2It can just phase out the old lineup over time.

I guess we will see what happens when I get home.

Time Warner finally cleans up the channel lineup

Time Warner Cable in the Charlotte, NC area is finally addressing one of my biggest pet peeves with their service:  the organization of their channel lineup. 

If you live in the area then you probably received a letter in the mail with a flyer showing the new lineup that starts on March 30, 2010.  Click the image below for a PDF copy of the new lineup.

This annoyed me so much that I could not wait for Time Warner and used the features within Media Center to organize the channels in a way that made sense for me.  Click the image below to see what my custom line-up looks like:

The ironic part of it is that Time Warner’s new lineup looks a lot like mine.  Almost as if they sneaked a copy of my lineup.  For example, let’s look at my “Family” group versus the new “Kids & Family”:

Family		Kids & Family
50	ABC Family HD	200	Disney Channel East (HD – 1200)
51	Disney Channel HD	201	Disney Channel West
52	Disney Chanel West	202	Disney XD
53	Disney XD	205	Nickelodeon
54	Cartoon Network HD	206	Nick Jr
55	Boomerang	207	Nicktoons
56	Nickelodeon	208	TeenNick
57	Nicktoons	210	PBS Kids Sprout
58	Nick Jr	211	Discovery Kids
59	UNC Kids	213	Cartoon Network (HD – 1213)
60	PBS Kids Sprout	214	Boomerang
61	Discovery Kids	215	ABC Family (HD – 1215)
62	TeenNick	216	TV Land
63	TV Land	218	Hallmark Channel
64	Hallmark Channel	221	Family Network
65	FamilyNet	222	American Life TV

As you can see the channel lineups are almost the same except they have more gaps in their numbering.  Also they still have channels in the guide multiple times such as Disney Channel which stays in the non digital tier at 54 and is also at 200 in standard definition grouped with the other Family channels and is also at 1200 in HD.  On my customized lineup Disney Channel shows up once at 51 and in the best quality available.  The channel shows up on all my TV’s regardless of if they are HD or not (I still have on SD set left in the house).

Based on the new grouping I will definitely have less work to do to get my lineup the way I want but I still cannot use their lineup by default.  At the very least I need to remove the duplicates and replace all the SD version of channels with the HD counterpart but that’s pretty much it.  I really do not need to reorder or renumber the channels.

The only thing I am worried about now is that Zap2It updates my guide data correctly and on time so that I do not miss any recordings.  We will see what happens.

Time Warner Adds 10 HD Channels

Time Warner just added 10 HD channels yesterday.  You will need cable card and an SDV tuning adapter to get the new channels.  Zap2It has only updated their guide with the new HBO HD channels so you have to wait until they add they other ones before they start showing up in your guide.  I have verified that the channels are working under the TV diagnostics.

From Time Warner:

New HD Channels!

Time Warner Cable is adding 10 more HD channels to the lineup on November 23rd – just in time for the holidays!

• HBO Signature HD
• HBO Family HD
• HBO Comedy HD
• HBO Zone HD
• HBO Latino HD
• ActionMax HD
• Showtime Too HD
• Cartoon Network HD
• We HD
• IFC HD

Time Warner Officially Supports ATI DCT

Thanks to a comment by reader Jason it has come to my attention that Time Warner Cable is officially supporting the ATI Digital Cable Tuner on their website.  Jason posted this link (HERE) to his local Time Warner Cable SDV website page where it clearly list the following  devices as being compatible with the SDV Tuning Adapter:

• TiVo Series 3 DVR
• TiVo HD DVR
• TiVo HD XL DVR
• Moxi HD DVR
• ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner

I checked my local Time Warner Cable website to find the same change had been made on the SDV page.  This is a huge change from before when I would have to say that I had a Tivo just to get a truck roll to bring me some cable cards.  I personally have been working with a great Field Operations manager with Time Warner here in Charlotte and it seems that they are very interested in learning more about Media Center and being better prepared to support Media Center customers.  This change looks like it supports that attitude shift so lets hope it continues after the Ceton card hits the market and their Cable Card request double from 4 to 8.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, media center, media center-windows 7, cable-tv,news, dvr