Looks like I was wrong in my previous post. I spoke with a very cable savvy friend at Motorola who said that the trend now days if to duplicate the signals in the digital domain. So for example with HBO, the original legacy HBO is still there for the analog customers but the digital customers get this (re-sent as a digital signal) plus several other HBO's. The same is true for the other premiums such as Showtime. This is why these guys have re-named their channel line-up to HBO (family, signature etc.) from HBO (east1, east2, west1 west2 etc.) – the new names make more sense in this new context.
He did not know if they replicate the whole analog section (Locals, HGTV etc.) but definitely that the biggies are replicated on most newer systems. The biggies are PPV, Movies, Sports and yes--Porn. It turns out that the Porn is done for security reasons, Basically, the analog scrambling is not good enough to satisfy some people who don't want the stuff on their TV. Damn -- Looks like I can't listen to the sound anymore on CH-99 :-).
His suggestion was to contact your local cable company and get them to tell you what their line up was and what was digital and what is not if you are going to sign up for the digital service. It differs somewhat from provider to provider. Also, apparently there is a discussion of in the latest issue of Consumer Reports – I haven’t looked at it yet.
