Alright here's the deal, about a week ago we bought the the TV, hooked it up and performed its 'Auto Program.' When it finished I was suprised to see a few extra digital cable channels (most notably the Music Choice channels) and the two local HD stations and TNTHD. The TV was also picking up other channels that it couldn't really receive, so I went into the channel set up and selected 'Hidden' on all of those. All was set...or at least I thought. Well, the next day when the TV was turned on it was still on the same channel it was on when turned off, but you could not use the Channel up or down functions, and it couldn't tune into the local HD stations and you would have to manually tune to a specific channel. I have repeated the process about four times now, and it seems to always happen. If I go into the Menu under the channel set up area and look at the 'Show/Hide' Submenu only one or two channels show up! We originally did not subscribe to digital cable, however, now we do, as well as the the HD Tier and we are using the SA Explorer 8000HD. Digital signals and of course the HD signals look awesome, but the analog channels suffer more than when directly connected to the TV. But I have the above problems when the cable is connected to the TV. I have a feeling that it is realated to the CableCARD. I believe the TV wants to pickup all the digital and HD channels but because the CableCARD is not there it is having problems with the channel memory. We were going to get the CableCARD from Time Warner, but apparently it is not available were I live (we are the last to get everything). So in the mean time we went with the Explorer 8000HD. Can anyone help me out here? What are your 2¢?
I have the KDF-42WF655. Before I bought this Sony, I had the Samsung 46" that I thought sucked on SD channels so I took it back and got the Sony. Very happy with it so far. I've had it for over a month. I have Insight cable. I got the Digital HD package because I was getting a HD TV. I bypassed the HD digital cable box and ran the cable directly to the TV and did the auto scan as you did. I did not get the local HD stations but I have an antenna for those anyway. I got the digital music channels. I also got a surprise. I got digital channels 83, 84, 85 and 86. These have sub channels like 83.2, 83.4,..... and so on. These contain the video on demand programming. Anything the people who live in my area are paying to watch, I get to watch. I don't know what is on, when it is on or even if I'll get to see the program to the end but I see it. Can't record it. It just a guessing game but it's here.
If I were you, I would just do the auto scan and then go into the channel menu and select "show" on all the digital channels. You never know what you'll get. You'll have to play around with it until you figure out what channels are being used. I plan on dropping the digital HD box in January since the regular cable channels are not really digital. It's just the box. That's what gets you the TV guide and, with the HD box, the DVR. All those signals are in the cable all the time. You just need the box to get them unless you have a Sony TV with this tuner. The Pay channels like HBO and Showtime need the box too but I don't watch them. I get enough TV as it is.