HDTV Tip: High-Def Cable Stations are on Different Channels

I’ll leave his name out of it since there’s no reason to be rude, but these two emails made me laugh. Hopefully by sharing them we’ll help you avoid the same problem in the future.

Last Christmas I bought our family (well, OK, ME) an HDTV. Nothing special.. actually one of the cheapest I could find out there, but one that should be able to do 720P/1080i. In order to take advantage of that, I upgraded my already expensive RCN cable to Digital. Problem is, I can’t seem to tell how much better my pictures are because of HD… The 32″ LCD TV is a huge improvement over what I had (old 29″ CRT) and I can see picture improvements in DVD and PS2, so I have no qualms with the TV. I’m more worried about the Digital Cable. Is the extra $15/mo I pay worth it?

So the question is, now that all I have in my house is an HDTV and a Digital Cable box, how can I tell? I.e., is there some way I can compare HD vs. non-HD content with my setup? I know I can watch HD shows (like LOST) and I know they look much better than they did on my old TV, but I can’t tell if that’s mostly because I upgraded my TV or a lot of that has to do with paying extra for the Digital box/ HD content.

Just in case you were wondering whether or not to deal with my question, you can disregard it. After sending it off to you, I sat down in front of my TV and for the first time, really tried to figure the whole setup out. Turns out I didn’t know that the HD channels were different from their SD counterparts… there were all those HD channels up in the 160-180 range! :-o I just totally did not know that. I’d presumed that when an HD program came on, the regular channel would just switch over to HD for those connecting HD equipment… duh.

And when I saw an HD program, let me assure you, I KNEW it was HD. I feel so dumb, I’ve been subscribed to Ditigal RCN for nearly a year now and I realize this now… what a waste of money and equipment. Well, better late than never. I still would like to thank you because this is what prompted me to find all of this out ;-)

You should definitely be able to tell a difference between regular, standard definition content and HDTV. If you can’t, try some channels further up the dial menu bar. So for the record, while an HD channel may occasionally show content in SD (commercials especially), an SD channel will never show HD.