Client has a convalescent home with eight TVs. TWC account is residential. Changing this to commercial might be a part of the solution.

There's one main 60" LED with an HD box, a Cisco 4742HDC. No problems here AT ALL.

All the other TVs have always used SD. They now must have a box to get SD; the box is the Cisco "Digital Transport Adapter" DTA 170HD, which has an HDMI and a Ch 3 output. Five TVs are good with this using HDMI.

The other 2 TVs have component inputs which would presumably look better than the Channel 3 inputs. The question is, will Time Warner let the client get two boxes for SD only? My installer buddy insists that if you have one cable box with HD, any other HD-capable boxes HAVE to have HD. Client says he's asked about boxes for those two TVs and it will be $25 per month for each box, thank you. It's possible he's asking the wrong question.

Anybody know offhand if TWC will cheaply let you have boxes with component outputs, which might have to be HD boxes where HD is not enabled?

Thanks for the help with this.

The boxes with component video output are $12.75 per month.

Use a TiVo Roamio Pro and TiVo Mini units and you only need a single CableCARD for $2.50 per month plus the TiVo fee on the main box only. That would only be a 6 tuner setup, but you can have extra mini units to cover all your TVs, one just gets bumped if you use too many.

I take it you mean non-DVRs.

davenport,
It didn't occur to me to mention we don't have any DVRs of any type in the system. Sorry, because that's a natural thing to assume.

We do not want TiVo AT ALL as it will complicate things and someone will surely get themselves mixed up with it.

Were you suggesting TiVo units because they are easier or cheaper to use than the little Cisco adaptors, or are you improving our TiVo system... which we don't have?


Okay... The starting point is that we have 8 TVs. I didn't mention we will continue to need 8 TVs, but we will. You're saying a system for six can be used if we get extra mini units "to coverall your TVs...." Does that "cover all your TVs" except when people attempt to use 7 or 8 TVs? If you had a convalescent home as a client, with people in different rooms who won't negotiate TV time with one another, would you install this? Or am I going off in a direction that shows I don't understand what you're talking about?

If they let you have Digital transport adaptors along with hd box, there shouldn't be any trouble getting sd box?

How are component to hdmi convertors these days?

These days my lone source for cable is a cisco dta-170HD.

$25/mo/box (non-dvr) sounds like commercial rates to me. Here in San Diego TWC does not charge extra for HD service, so an HD box and and SD Digital box cost the same/month and give you all channels (basic, expanded etc.) The little digital adapter doohickeys only give you the basics... ch's 2-99, generally in SD quality, not sure how they price these, never seen one with more than RF output.

TWC San Diego and L.A. have similar if not identical policies.

$12.75 is non-DVR (extra outlet) but with component video for HD to older TVs.
$12.99 is the fee for DVR.
$19.99 is the fee for whole-house DVR.

I was suggesting TiVo because it's better and much cheaper after a couple years, but the install is more complicated.

When you say "We", do you mean you are living in a convalescent home?

;)

The entire planet is a convalescent home. Most of us thrive for quite a while after going through the trauma of birth, even for a while seemingly stronger than at birth, but there's not a single one of us who has actually survived birth... we all die sooner or later. Or maybe it's only the people who breathe air that die....


I'd call not paying $25 per month not any trouble!


We don't have that problem. We have two places with component ins on the TVs and no HDMI ins, but the boxes output RF and HDMI.


I'm too much of a TV addict to want that. Of course, you probably don't want that, either!

I get most basic cable channels in HD with the 170HD, the two I really miss is baseball network and TCM. I get to see all the Angel and Dodger broadcasts. The HD channels are in 400 range with cisco 170HD. I have channels going in to the 900 range. I never watch the sd channels in 2-99.

All the channels just moved over the weekend. It's a nightmare for control system programming, but nearly all of the channels below 100 are now HD so that's great to be able to type in channels 2, 4, 7, or 11 again and see a nice picture.

[Link: timewarnercable.com]

Yeah, it's always been a drag to go into a home or business, set them up with cable, then go searching for the HD channels. So far I've found that the HD version of 4 (NBC for me) is either 404, 604, 704, or 1104. The other low numbers (2, 7, 11, etc) use the same prefix on the same system. But, idiot cable programmers, as soon as someone who doesn't know that uses the system, they hit 2 or 4 or whatever and their 60" TV is now displaying SD.

The way to line up SD and HD is the way DirecTV did it: 2 SD is followed by 2 HD and you can choose not to see the SDs if they are duplicates of the HDs.

When will people learn that having to learn an entire new set of numbers is just a bad idea for system performance? Even if it's just adding a prefix, it's still conceptually a different set of numbers.