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 GeekJediRF is Good For YouPremium
join:2001-06-21
Mukwonago, WI
 ·CenturyLink
 ·VOIPo
| [TWC] New to TWC Hi there!
I just signed up with TWC (Milwaukee), and I thought I'd share my experience so far.
A bit of history: I had been a DirecTV sub for many years. About two years ago, I "cut the cord" and went to OTA and Netflix/Hulu. I have two TiVo Premieres w/lifetime service.
I've been perfectly happy with the combo, though there are some shows I did miss. At any rate, my wife works out of the house, and recently her responsibilities have changed. When she's at work, our two kids have to be upstairs entertaining themselves. It's been hard on them and while we don't allow TV watching all day, after two years of Netflix, they're running out of things to watch.
Moving on...
I notice that while not "cheap", Cable TV prices aren't bad if you're using a cable card, auto pay, and don't do the premium channels. So, I decide to give TWC a shot, and sign up for service.
The installer shows up a bit early, but is nice and easy to deal with. He has two cable cards with him, and set up takes a few minutes. Things are working for the most part, but I notice I'm missing some channels. He kind of shrugs it off and leaves. I later realize that I needed tuning adapters, which he didn't install.
I call back and they send someone out the next day. He arrives, but doesn't have any tuning adapters with him. Now this would normally be the start of a complaint but these guys were fantastic!
The installer calls another tech in a town 20 miles away. That tech calls the office, has someone meet him at the interstate with two adapters then drives to my house to install them! Talk about service!
Anyway so far, so good. I still have my antenna up, so I use that for the locals. The HD looks pretty good, especially compared to what I saw a few years ago. The only downside is I'm kind of suffering from TV overload. There's so much on, I can't figure out what to watch.
So, that begins our relationship. I have a pretty decent TV package on two TV's for just under $50. Not too bad. 
--
The goal of the broadcast engineer is to get all the meters on the transmitter to go as far to the right as possible!! | |
| How about that HD channel lineup? It's quite a bit better than DirecTV. Some of the channels you'll note now that you get in HD which DirecTV does not carry:
BBC America
Cooking Channel
DIY
E!
G4
Game Show Network
H2
HLN
The Hub
IFC
Investigation Discovery
Lifetime Movie Network
National Geographic Wild
OWN
Oxygen
Style
Turner Classic Movies
They really do need to bring over Ovation, Sundance Channel, and FEARnet in HD to their Milwaukee market though... the C-SPANs would also be nice but they only seem to carry them in their NYC market. Apparently Time Warner thinks people outside of New York City have no interest in politics or documentaries? 
Your experience with Time Warner's picture quality in Milwaukee should be better than many of their other markets though. Milwaukee is one of their 2 HD 4 SD per QAM markets, giving HD channels ~14.5 Mbps of bitrate. Other markets like NYC have heavier macroblocking issues as they're packed 3 HD to a QAM resulting in every HD channel being allocated ~12 Mbps bitrate or less. | |
GeekJediRF is Good For YouPremium
join:2001-06-21
Mukwonago, WI Reviews:
·CenturyLink
·VOIPo
| Yeah, the HD does look good. I had commented to my wife last night that I hadn't really noticed much in the way of artifacts, and that TW's HD actually looked better than a couple of our HD OTA channels here with 3+ sub-channels.
I was also pleasantly surprised with the number of HD channels available (and the fact that they were free, unlike when I was with D).
Time will tell how the tuning adapter and cable cards play, but I have to say that as a "cord-cutter" what I'm paying now is a good value. I was paying double for less on D.
--
The goal of the broadcast engineer is to get all the meters on the transmitter to go as far to the right as possible!! | |
Reviews:
 ·Time Warner Cable
| reply to 45612019
said by 45612019:How about that HD channel lineup? It's quite a bit better than DirecTV. Some of the channels you'll note now that you get in HD which DirecTV does not carry:
BBC America
Cooking Channel
DIY
E!
G4
Game Show Network
H2
HLN
The Hub
IFC
Investigation Discovery
Lifetime Movie Network
National Geographic Wild
OWN
Oxygen
Style
Turner Classic Movies
They really do need to bring over Ovation, Sundance Channel, and FEARnet in HD to their Milwaukee market though... the C-SPANs would also be nice but they only seem to carry them in their NYC market. Apparently Time Warner thinks people outside of New York City have no interest in politics or documentaries?
Your experience with Time Warner's picture quality in Milwaukee should be better than many of their other markets though. Milwaukee is one of their 2 HD 4 SD per QAM markets, giving HD channels ~14.5 Mbps of bitrate. Other markets like NYC have heavier macroblocking issues as they're packed 3 HD to a QAM resulting in every HD channel being allocated ~12 Mbps bitrate or less.
I am pretty sure that all of the SDV HD channels are configured to be either 2 to a QAM or 3 to a QAM depending on available capacity.
here are the SDV setups:
10 SD to a QAM
6 SD 1 HD to a QAM
3 HD to a QAM
2 HD 2 SD to a QAM
2 HD 3 SD to a QAM
TWC North Texas (Dallas) carries some of the rare HD channels on TWC:
Sportsman Channel HD
Reelz Channel HD
Ovation HD
Showtime Next HD
Showtime Women HD
Showtime Beyond HD
Fox Deportes HD
Bloomberg HD
Halogen HD (TWC Dallas is the only cable system to carry it so far that I know of outside of At&t Uverse that carries it) (they respect OAR and air HD programs in their original aspect so they sometimes show HD shows with bars on top and bottom but use the 16x9 save for the small section on top and bottom that is not used.
I am really surprised that milwuakee does not have Sportsman Channel HD as they are home to one of the offices for the Sportsman Channel and they started there. | | |
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