I just got my SDV letter

I received my Switched Digital Video (SDV) letter in the mail yesterday from Time Warner. I have know this letter was coming for a few months now and the day is finally here.

If you do not know what SDV is, let me try to do a quick explanation. Basically the cable companies are hitting bandwidth limitations and are having a hard time keeping up with the demand for more HD channels. To combat this they will start sending a group of "lesser watched" channels via SDV. The SDV technology will only send this group of channels to your home when you tune into those channels (i.e. on demand). This opens up bandwidth since all of the channels are not sent to your house at the same time.

This affects me since I have Cable Card and the Cable Cards I have cannot request the channels being sent via SDV. SDV requires 2-way communication with Time Warner and I can only do 1-way. A device known as a Tuning Adapter has been created to alleviate the problem with 1-way Cable Cards but it currently has only been announced for Tivo devices.

After scanning the list of channels I can't say I am too upset or bothered. I have no problem giving up these channels for more HD channels. We'll see when those HD channels actually arrive.

The channels that Time Warner will be moving to SDV are listed after the jump. The channels in italics are the ones I remotely care about.

Hispanic Tier Channels

Boomerang Espanol	Discovery Espanol	La Familia
Canal Sur	ESPN Deportes	MTVtr3s
Cine Latino	Fox Sports Espanol	Mun2
CNN Espanol	Galavision	Telefutura
TV Azteca

Premium - West Coast Feeds

Cinemax West	HBO West	Showtime West
Action Max West	HBO 2 West	Showtime Too West
MoreMax West	HBO Family West	Sundance West
Thriller Max West	HBO Signature West	Flix West
Showcase West

Sports Package Channels

ESPN Gameplan	NHL Center Ice	NBA Preview Channel
MLB Extra Innings	NBA League Pass

Sports Tier Channels

CBS College Sports Network	Fox College Sports Central	Game Show Network
Fox Soccer Channel	Fox College Sports Pacific	NHL Network
Fox College Sports Atlantic	Fuel	The Tennis Channel
Outdoor Channel	NBA TV

Other Channels

TV One	BBC America	American Life TV
Boomerang	Gospel Music Channel	TEN Blue
Current TV	EWTN (English)	TEN Clips
Ovation	Bloomberg TV	iN Demand PPV Events 1
iN Demand PPV Events 2