Digital TV Conversion Question

[morey1]

I have a newbie question for all of you experts...

Currently have TWC Digital cable hooked up with a DVR on an analog set, and also a second HD DVR on a Panasonic 50" plasma.

Are channels 0-99 on TWC "analog" channels right now?  Will they be changing to "digital" in February, meaning the picture will improve on the plasma?  Obviously HD looks great, channels 100+ (digital, I think) look good but nothing good on those channels, in my opinion.  I'm wondering if, in February, channels 0-99 will look better, at least on the plasma TV?

I ask because a friend was touting the quality of the picture improvement he sees with UVerse, though he's only on analog tv sets.  Uverse is not available in Muskego apparently, so that got me thinking about the above question.

Thanks.

[brewtownska]

One of the things TWC uses as a selling point is if you have their service, you won't have to do anything once the digital transition happens.  That is because 2-99 will stay analog, that way the majority of households using TWC won't have to upgrade their TVs or rent a cable box.

If TWC changed those all to digital, each of their customers would need a cable box to tune them in (on each of their TVs).

With Uverse, all their users need a cable box anyway, so that is why they can have all their channels be digital.

So no, your 2-99 won't be looking better anytime soon

Mike

[kevbeck122]

There were talks that TWC was going to do a digital simulcast for channels 2-99, meaning they would keep the analog channel for those that don't have a box and people with boxes would get the digital version.  Some of the channels can be found starting at channel 1877, but it's not official yet.  They need to figure out the problems they're currently having before they implement the simulcast channels.

More info can be found here: http://www.timewarnercable.com/Wisconsin/site.faqs/Cable/DigitalSim.  That site says this was supposed to be done by late 2008, so obviously they're behind like usual.

[WPXE ION]

Does that plasma have a DTV tuner built in? If so hook up an antenna and get digital channels for free. The HD will be in the true format sent out by the broadcast station. AND IT"S FREE!!!!!

[morey1]

(a) I do have a box on each TV so I was "hoping" I'd get digial versions 2-99 on each TV, but apparently not.

(b) Yes, the plasma has a tuner.  

The background to my question was that a friend has uverse and they touted "all digital" and his analog and digital TVs both saw an improvement in picture quality.  I'd assumed that was due to it somehow giving him a digital signal?  That led me to further assume that TW would give a digital signal on 2-99 sometime soon as part of the conversion.