UPDATE: You can order your Tuning Adapters at this link. (Not in the KC system? Try changing the URL in your browser, substituting your market for "kansascity".) Thanks to reader Craig Brown for that.
Whether to avoid any further FCC fines or simply out of the goodness of their hearts, Time Warner Cable is planning to make available, at no cost, devices that will help its customers who were left out in the cold by the Switched Digital Video mess.
Last week I blew a fuse after I tuned into channel 1497 on Time Warner Cable expecting to find ESPN HD and instead found ... 1497 had disappeared. I immediately assumed it had been moved off the regular HD grid and onto one fenced off, like so many other channels, from the poor saps (like me) who were using CableCARDs in a laughably futile attempt to stray from the Time Warner nest.
I wrote this, then someone at Time Warner talked me down. Turns out the high-def ESPNs weren't gone, and I could still watch them. But ... I still had something to cling to. At its new location, that channel was surrounded by HD channels I couldn't get because of my crippled CableCARD. And since at least one Time Warner CSR had told at least one TV Barn reader that Time Warner would never, ever support my CableCARD.... well, the lion roared again.
Only that turned out to be premature, and now I have been talked down again.
Word began leaking out this weekend (well, it might have been raining earlier but that's when I noticed a puddle under my door) that Time Warner Cable across the country were, in fact, providing the tuning adapters that would make the CableCARDs two way as God intended them, and thus would be able to access all those channels currently off-limits to the 1,200 of us who swing that way.
That means there shouldn't be any need for the FCC to get involved -- always a circumstance I would prefer to avoid, even when it's on my side it gives me the heebie-jeebies -- and maybe by Christmas there will be enough of the magic gizmos that Time Warner Cable can slip one under my TiVo. (Actually, I'll take two.)
Here in San Diego the paste method leads to a site error unfortunately. TWSD continues to play dumb on the tuning adapter issue, still pushing the "we'll give you two cable boxes for free" option to Tivo users.
Also, an interesting change in tone (albeit not comforting) was the switch in story on channels that have been dropping offline here. So far the HD Vip pack has gone SDV, MOJO, etc. Of course, the billing dept. didn't not the loss of that pack and continued to try to charge me for it. A couple weeks back I called regarding the Fox Sports HD premium pack and was told that "there has been some sort of technical problem reported with sending this channel to cablecard users". So at least here in So-Cal TW continues to offer disparate service to its cablecard base. The technical issue is, IMO, a highly suspect excuse.
Anyway, congrats and good luck on getting the tuning adapter; hope they come through for you!
Posted by: sddjd | November 07, 2008 at 01:14 PM
Update: Had to contact TWSD again due to channel disappearances. The rep asked me to hold and spoke to the supervisor regarding my tuning adapter question.
"It has been discussed, but no decision has been made as to whether or not they will be offered."
Perhaps one of your TW insiders could address the issue of why so many TW markets are effectively telling us cablecard users where to go.
I can understand why people are loathe to have the FCC get involved, but here in SD Time Warner needs a lesson in what a mandate actually means.
Posted by: sddjd | November 21, 2008 at 05:29 PM