Yep, that's right; HDTV is being blasted into many of America's homes TODAY. Time Warner Cable is now in the midst of a full-scale national rollout of its digital cable service that will eventually be available to all its subscribers, everywhere. But, in places where it's already deployed (i.e. Florida, California, North Carolina, Atlanta, New York), all the average homeowner has to do is simply call their local Time Warner Cable office and ask to have their analog cable set-top receiver changed to a digital receiver. In fact, there's no additional charge for the switch.

But, that's not the best part.

The best feature of the digital cable system is that it's HDTV ready. If you have an HDTV television, an HDTV compatible receiver or even a multimedia monitor, you can connect it directly to Time Warner's Explorer 2000HD box and receive HDTV broadcasts live. To date, HD networks include two HBO channels, two Showtime channels and a PBS channel, but Discovery and a host of other networks are scheduling HDTV rollouts by the end of this year - and, of course, you can always pick up your local ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX affiliate via the Explorer 2000HD in HDTV if you're in one of the Top 30 TV markets.

So, what's the scuttlebutt?

Well, the quality is great. The Explorer 2000HD actually processes both standard-resolution TV (NTSC) and HDTV signals and outputs them both on a set of component video connectors - either y, r-y, b-y or y, pr, pb. The output resolution is 1080i (so all 480p, 720p and NTSC channels are actually up-converted to 1080i) at a clock speed of 108MHz. Like most MPEG2 video processors (i.e. DVD players), there are artifacts that can be seen by the trained eye, but the average viewer would see an image that's stunning and worthy of bragging to all their neighbors about.

So, how much?

Well, right now Time Warner is bearing the cost of the project and footing the bill to get HDTV receivers in the field. Less than 1000 have been deployed up to now, but as more HDTV compatible sets are available and more HDTV programming is ready, Time Warner expects to see tremendous growth of the implementation.

So check your local cable provider, as there's a chance you can be the first one on the block with HDTV today - without buying anything (except a $7000 TV).

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Gary Kayye is Principal of Kayye Consulting, a firm that specializes in providing marketing consulting, telephony integration and training development to the professional audiovisual industry. He spent 12 years at Extron and AMX as VP of Sales and Marketing before founding his own firm. He can be reached at www.kayye.com or via e-mail at gkayye@kayye.com. He is also the volunteer chairman of the PETC. He also founded KNews.

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