Program Guide for HD w/ and w/o cable card

[rdlm]

Newbie HD question...

I've had a Series2 for years, but we're upgrading to a high def TV (arrived today), and I was planning to get the new Tivo HD XL. I just plugged the cable line right into my TV, I can get a number of the HD channels right off the line. For example, our local PBS is on Analog 9, and is HD on 9-1 and 9-2. But it appears that channels like HD ESPN require a cable box or ocable card (even though there's no exta charge for the HD version of the channel). I'm obviously thinking of the cable card to go into the Tivo.

When I look at the cable company's (comcast) channel lineup, they never show things like "9-1" and "9-2" -- everything appears to be mapped to an "integer" channel. Is this correct? And if so, then exactly what does the TiVo Program Guide show? Does it support both modes (with and without a card), showing the correct program schedule in either mode?

Or am I a very confused HD newbie?

[gastrof]

What you're getting on the digital side is called "QAM", the cable digital format.

TiVo has no guide data for those channels or their numbering.

Once you have cable cards, your guide data will be in sync with how the digital channels show up. (The cable channel numbers the cards will use will be the same as those used in the guide.)

The really nasty part about this is that the cable companies have the option of giving us basic cable channels unscrambled, but for the most part scramble everything on the digital side, except for the OverTheAir digital channels (which by law they can't scramble).

I have the feeling that if the cable companies started going unscrambled in QAM with the same channels that have been unscrambled for YEARS on analog, TiVo would end up having a guide for those channel numbers too.

I doubt it'll happen.