Time Warner Cable HD question

I just hooked up my new equipment this weekend with HD. The analog channels for Time Warner get a manual 5 channel force to get sound from all my speakers. Digital channels sound good automatically. While watching the news on the HD channel, I only get sound out of my center speaker. When a commercial comes on, I get sound from all speakers. I can't even do a 5 channel "force" while the news is on in HD. What's up? Is that a receiver tweak or is that normal from news broadcasts?

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I just hooked up my new equipment this weekend with HD. The analog channels for Time Warner get a manual 5 channel force to get sound from all my speakers

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This is because analog channels only come in stereo at the most. I use Dolby Pro Logic IIx Movie when watching analog channels and get a good surround sound effect.

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While watching the news on the HD channel, I only get sound out of my center speaker.

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Most of these channels are encoded in Dolby Digital. Since you are watching a program that is primarily talking the content will mostly come out of the speaker designed for the talking.

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When a commercial comes on, I get sound from all speakers.

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Commercials are designed to get your attention. If they have the ability to make the sound come from all around you they will because it will get your attention. They can do that on a channel capable of Dolby Digital.

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I can't even do a 5 channel "force" while the news is on in HD. What's up? Is that a receiver tweak or is that normal from news broadcasts?

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Some receivers see a Dolby Digital signal and only want to stick to that. I think it is normal from news programs.

I hope this answers your question.

You should get Time Wanrer themselves to send a cable guy to install or reinstall the HD cable equipment. To use an analogy, don't take this personally because it isn't meant at you directly, "a person who acts as his own lawyer in court has a fool for a client."
To avoid having to pay Time Warner anything for this, for 95 cents or so a month, you can upgrade your account to include home protection or whatever its called- you'll have to ask them, which includes one free upgrade a year.. You can then 1 month later cancell this 95 cents a month service without any problems.

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Originally Posted by hemifever

I just hooked up my new equipment this weekend with HD. The analog channels for Time Warner get a manual 5 channel force to get sound from all my speakers. Digital channels sound good automatically. While watching the news on the HD channel, I only get sound out of my center speaker. When a commercial comes on, I get sound from all speakers. I can't even do a 5 channel "force" while the news is on in HD. What's up? Is that a receiver tweak or is that normal from news broadcasts?

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That makes sense about the news broadcast being voice only and only utilizing my center channel. Guess I've always heard so much more coming out of the others in movies and such that I was baffled on this News channel. But it makes perfect sense.

Time Warner WAS gonna hook everything up. However, I was still waiting on my home theater cabinet to be delivered so I didn't want to hook it all up just to unplug things. So I told him to hit the highway. This weekend is the first time back in my house after a lightening strike and house fire 4 months ago. I got all new Rotel equipment (1067 receiver, 1060 dvd player, and 1055 cd player) and a Mitsubishi 52" DLP. Upgraded from Monster cable to Transparent cable. The Rotel acts much differently than my Marantz 7000 did.

I'd still call them and maybe they'll check it out in your house for nothing. Time Warner has actually been pretty good & reliable to me in LA. To me, it makes absolutely no sense why any TV broadcast at minimum isn't coming out of all your speakers, even the news. I was told by the cable company not to hook up the box's audio out to my receiver's TV inputs because they said I'd get mono sound. Perhaps I misunderstood someone, as I think Jeff or someone said this wasn't true, but to be honest my TV sound, sounded much better coming from my HD TV audio monitor out via cheap RCA cables into my receiver's TV audio inputs than via the cable box.

On a related note, I'd ask them for an HD DVR (which acts as a digital box as well) as its only about $10 a month and works great. They haven't publicized it yet so you'll have to request them to install it.