Sorry, playing with subject lines. Where was I? Oh, yeah…I seem to recall that Comcast makes you pay extra for HD, which came as a shock after the mandated switch to digital…but notice the hair they could split: The world only had to go digital, but nobody said anything about high-resolution digital. And so HD as you and I and any reasonable person would expect it is an extra-cost option.

You really ought to check out what you can get over the air before you upgrade your cable. You’re in a major metro with major network outlets, and I’ll bet the top 4 at least are broadcasting in real HD (1080). Digital’s kind of all-or-nothing, you either get a crystal-clear picture or garbage; but if you have line-of-sight to the transmitter, you’ll get good signal. And they sell amplified antennas for under $100 that claim to pull in digital signals in fringe areas, which cost amortized over a year is cheaper than an HD cable upgrade.

Hell, depending on what you want to watch, you might be able to ditch cable completely, and supplement the over-the-air channels with Internet video. Works for me. I’m a convert and I’ll bend your ear for a gigabyte if you encourage me. Fair warning.

Gave that up, but I have a couple of over-the-air tuners that also work on cable (identical freqs, different modulation), and their channel scans of the statutory unencrypted local channels were illuminating (I guess they can’t turn off video completely because I still have Internet, but they let through only what they’re obligated to carry by law…which is the same as what an antenna brings in. Bless Mt. Sutro.)

Some of the local broadcast stations are making good use of their ability to subdivide their spectrum. KQED has an empire of channels, doubled after they borged KTEH, and in addition to the main 1080 channel they have thematic low-rez channels like PBS:Kids. Well thought-out.

The pictorial equivalent of a kiloword is the channel guide on the tuner Web site, if you want to see the underlying HDTV frequency allocations. Otherwise, I’ll spare you any more of it.

My 40″ TV seems to be a really good one. And it cost $300 about 6 months ago. I researched type and brands, and what I could about private labels. I found out that a private brand made by a major manufacturer was likely to be either good or bad. I found it on sale and then there was an in-store coupon.

So I bought one made by Panasonic, I think, at a local chain so as to be able to return it easily. I haven’t had to take it back.

What’s your cable system? Not sure it matters, but I can only speak from my experience with Comcast. Which has less to do with Comcast than with the choices your local broadast stations make.

The stations got to keep their 6MHz bandwidth in the changeover, and the digital means that they can divide their bandwidth up lots of ways. The NBC affiliate here broadcasts 1080 on their main channel, and also the weather on one dinky 480 channel, sports on another, and a 480 version of their main programming. It was a like a stock split for every TV station in the world.

I’m guessing you were parked on the station’s low-def channel, and moved up to their hi-def version. You switched channels, but it was the same programming at a different rez, so it would’ve looked like a resolution upgrade. Kinda cool.

It wouldn’t generally work out like that on my Comcast system, because for some reason they’ve shuffled the channels, and none of the stations’ subchannels are grouped together. But your cable system keeps them together, then it would work like that.

That’s one theory. Maybe your cable system is keeping the old analog channels around in parallel with the digital. They don’t have to, but it would make customers hanging on to their old analog TVs happy; no converter box.

Anyway, congratulations on finding the hidden HD, Bowser.