I guess people will complain and they will change it to , Menu bringing the Quick start and Guide then showing the EPG as you suggested. The Bell TV remote works that way BTW. They acctually needed to do something about the HD channels though , it is nice to have a way to show HD channels only on the EPG like we Bell users can.

Donnyjaguar, until very recently A&E HD and History HD were also available in the clear on C-Band. There is also more HD stuff either as feeds or as a regular channel on C Band but still for some people Pay TV providers are a viable and good choice. It is a shame though that as a customer you pay for a service that has less quality than what it is available either OTA or via FTA satellite signals.
Some of this signals are what is called a master HD feed with lots of bandwith allocated to them , therefore the quality is amazing , altough it would not be fair to pretend that the TV providers (even OTA) are supposed to deliver that quality to the masses. It would be like asking the Music industry to distribute and sell the master audio tracks to the masses.