[Jeffhs]

I'm near Cleveland and have Time Warner cable service. TW moved several channels (ShopNBC, Speed, Travel Channel and G4) to digital recently. I spoke with one of the customer service representatives over the phone a couple months ago and was told the company will not "drop" any channels, but they might as well have done just that as I don't get those channels on my flat screen anymore. I do not have a cable box; my cable connects directly to the TV.

How much longer will it be before TW starts moving must-carry channels such as CNN, TBS, TNT, et al. to digital, forcing folks like myself to use a cable box? Not that those channels are that important to me (they aren't; I'm perfectly happy with my local channels and their subchannels), but I don't want to pay the extra $10 monthly rental fee TW is charging for HD cable boxes. Even DTAs (digital transfer adapters)--those small cable boxes used with older analog TVs--come with a $0.99 rental fee after the first year; moreover, the cable operator will not mail these boxes to subscribers, who must go to the local TW cable office and pick them up personally. I cannot downgrade my cable to broadcast basic, either, without incurring a hefty early-termination fee (my cable service is part of a three-way bundle--cable, Internet and home phone).

I have cable because I do not get good reception using an OTA antenna (my Clear TV indoor DTV antenna gets every channel in this area but two--the two whose subchannels I watch the most), and do not want to go to the trouble of installing an outdoor antenna. However, if Time Warner does decide to move most or all must-carry channels to one of the digital tiers, I guess I'll just have to accept my situation the way it is. It will be no loss to me since, as I said, I am perfectly satisfied with just the broadcast channels and their DTV subchannels; any programming I do not currently receive over the cable I can always get on DVD, so I have no use or need for any of the must-carry channels.

I have no use for HDTV, either, but since flat screens are the only kind of TV now sold anywhere, and analog sets don't work well on so-called digital cable (my two analog CRT TVs will work on cable, but one channel, the NBC affiliate, is carried on Time Warner cable in HD and does not fill the screen vertically), I guess I don't have much of a choice. I personally believe HDTV is a fad that will fade into oblivion eventually, anyway. Quad (four-channel) sound in the 1970s comes to mind. The system went out of style and was all but forgotten by the early 1980s.

I see HDTV following the same dark road. The stations will continue broadcasting in ATSC (far too much money has been invested by American television stations in new transmitters, antennas, studio gear, etc. for station owners to even think of going back to analog), but HD television is, IMHO, a flash in the pan that may not last much longer. If the failure of 4-channel sound to develop into a successful method of sound reproduction is any indicator, I predict HDTV may die a quiet death in about five years (witness the failure of 3D motion pictures in theaters in the '50s), leaving us with only memories of the "old days" of what we used to call high-definition television.

Don't get me started on 4K, 8K and ultra-HD. These are extensions of HDTV that may fail as well within a year or so after they are put into place and are operational in this country. Innovation is one thing, but change just for the sake of change (HDTV taking over from NTSC and replacing that standard, making existing NTSC TVs unusable, is one example) makes no sense.