# Is there an easier way to get to HD channels?



## selimsnave (Mar 2, 2014)

Just got a Roamio, and I am currently adding all my shows to record. I used to be able to hit info on the channel guide and there was a button that would ask to take me to the HD channel. Now with the Tivo, let's say I wanted to record How I Met Your Mother. I have to find it in the guide, hit info, go to Explore This Show, and check other show times and then record from there.

Is there a button that will take me to the HD equivalent to the channel I am watching now?


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## celtic pride (Nov 8, 2005)

What i do is go to guide,how i met your mother is on 502 HD cbs monday at 8 p.m. in so cal.you can select to get that episode or get season pass ,you dont have to explore the show,unless your looking for a specific episode or different channel to watch it on. Just remember the network HD channels start on 502 CBS,504,NBC,507 ABC,511 is fox, once you learn where the channels are it will be very easy to set up a recording. you can also hit the blue B button when you have the guide on your screen and it will show the channel by name rather than number ,so if your looking for cbs HD and dont know the number ,hitting the B button on the remote wil lchange the guide from numbers to letters ,Then when you find CBS (they are in alphabetical order) you will have the sd chnannel number as wel las the HD channel number next to it.


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## selimsnave (Mar 2, 2014)

celtic pride said:


> What i do is go to guide,how i met your mother is on 502 HD cbs monday at 8 p.m. in so cal.you can select to get that episode or get season pass ,you dont have to explore the show,unless your looking for a specific episode or different channel to watch it on.


I don't remember the HD tv channels because I am used to having the cable box do it automatically.


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## celtic pride (Nov 8, 2005)

OH i see what you mean,I wish the tivo would do it for us also ,when i had directv the dvr they had would let you set it so that it would only show the HD channels ,unless the channel was only available in sd,Something i wish tivo would allows us to do.


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## selimsnave (Mar 2, 2014)

celtic pride said:


> OH i see what you mean,I wish the tivo would do it for us also ,when i had directv the dvr they had would let you set it so that it would only show the HD channels ,unless the channel was only available in sd,Something i wish tivo would allows us to do.


Yeah, that would be awesome. I would love for a tivo to show a popup when I am watching an SD channel "Click here for HD channel" and then it would take me there.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

celtic pride said:


> OH i see what you mean,I wish the tivo would do it for us also ,when i had directv the dvr they had would let you set it so that it would only show the HD channels ,unless the channel was only available in sd,Something i wish tivo would allows us to do.


The standard way to do it is to take a cup of your favorite beverage and just remove the SD versions of the channels you get in HD, tahdah.. no more SD numbers to remember:up:


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## selimsnave (Mar 2, 2014)

dianebrat said:


> The standard way to do it is to take a cup of your favorite beverage and just remove the SD versions of the channels you get in HD, tahdah.. no more SD numbers to remember:up:


So if I take out the SD numbers, will the HD numbers take it's place?


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## sangs (Jan 1, 2003)

Just remove the SD equivalents from your channel list and you'll never see them again. That's what I did anyway.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

selimsnave said:


> So if I take out the SD numbers, will the HD numbers take it's place?


I don't get what you're asking..
Remove the SD numbers, they're gone, and just use the HD numbers like most folks do.

This whole "substitution of HD on lower channel numbers" thing is IMO silly since only certain cable boxes do it and only in certain systems.


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## celtic pride (Nov 8, 2005)

I forgot i had done that removing the sd channels from my lineup DUH! But darn if i dont walk in the living room and my wife will have the tivo on channel 2 instead of 502!


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

We moved to Comcast at the same time we got the Tivos. At this point I have no idea where any of the channels are at. But coming from DirecTV my wife is very upset that the local channels aren't remapped. But for me, I've found that changing the guide to sort by name is a big help. 

Of course, my wife tends to watch live TV while I seldom do. She also never seems to want to use the search engine to find things to record. She prefers to just find them in the guide. After being with DirecTV for 12 years, she's having a real hard time adjusting.


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## ncfoster (Jan 22, 2011)

I am guessing that a lot of the confusion for some is that on DirecTV, at least when I had it, they remapped all of the local channels to their broadcast/common name equivalents. It didn't matter if you had SD or HD, you were able to access the channels through that common name number. i.e., in Chicago, you could tune to "Channel 2", "Channel 5", "Channel 7", Channel 9", etc., etc. People who are used to the way that those boxes work probably would rather have those mappings.

Even on the Comcast boxes that I have seen (which has not been many), I am pretty sure that those boxes would offer to tune to the HD version, when available, but since they only had to worry about Comcast, that is easier to do. Tivo would have to make this work across the many possible content providers, which, while probably doable, would be a lot more challenging than in any content-provider's box.

I haven't thought much about this in a while, because you eventually get used to your service. But, it would be great to have the ability to custom re-order/re-number channels. I know...dream on....


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

With my TivoHD, I go into set up and bring up the list of channels. I uncheck the channels I dont want to see appear in the guide. For example, ABC SD is on channel 006, while the HD transmission of ABC is on channel 806. I remove 006 from the listing. That way only 806 will show up.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

SNJpage1 said:


> With my TivoHD, I go into set up and bring up the list of channels. I uncheck the channels I dont want to see appear in the guide. For example, ABC SD is on channel 006, while the HD transmission of ABC is on channel 806. I remove 006 from the listing. That way only 806 will show up.


So did I, but the process took about 6 straight hours to sort through all the channels :-(.


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

SNJpage1 said:


> With my TivoHD, I go into set up and bring up the list of channels. I uncheck the channels I dont want to see appear in the guide. For example, ABC SD is on channel 006, while the HD transmission of ABC is on channel 806. I remove 006 from the listing. That way only 806 will show up.


The only problem with that is that you still need to remember the channel. At least your system seems to have some semblance of order. Here in Chicago things are all over the place. Example 2 is at 189 for the HD channel. 5 is at 188 for the HD, etc. They're all in the same relative place, but it's nonsensical. Actually not all of them, 20 HD is at 240.

Then the sub channels are really all over the place. 5-2 is at 341 but 11-2 is at 370. 9-2 is at 353. 7-2 is at 217. None of it makes any sense.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

tomhorsley said:


> So did I, but the process took about 6 straight hours to sort through all the channels :-(.


YIKES> the easiest way to do this on the HD box is to go from the channel list to live tv. Then, left arrow brings you back to the channel list without menu hopping.

The new HD interface makes this so much easier as you can remove channels right from the guide.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

I can see both arguments, 

I went through the channel listing and removed all the SD channels plus all the channels such as QVC, religious and foreign language programing etc that I'll never watch and then kept a list of those channels on a piece of paper stored under the TiVo so that I have someplace to start if I have to ever reset them.

With that said, one of the nice things about the Verizon FiOS box was that if I tuned in a SD channel a dialogue box would briefly show up saying "press button C to view in HD" (or whatever button it was)

The reason this was nice is when I scanned through the channels I'd often look through at the SD channels since they were all grouped together and when I found something I wanted, if it was SD I'd stay there, if it was available in HD it would tell me and I can switch if I wanted to.

Of course my wife just stayed on whatever channel she found, if she was on an SD channel she'd stay there even if an HD channel was available. It obviously bugged me more than her, I even tried telling her that "we paid for the extra space on the screen, why don't you use it?" but that didn't carry much clout.  Now she has no choice as the SD channels no longer show up in the guide 

-TL


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Yea, my wife still wants me to put the SD channels back. Other than the side bars, she doesn't see a difference.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

tomhorsley said:


> So did I, but the process took about 6 straight hours to sort through all the channels :-(.


Good lord, why did it take you that long!

I just pulled the channel listing down from the Cable Provider's web site and sorted it in Excel to give me just the SD channels with and HD option. I then printed that list in numeric order.

Fios had a total of 80 duplicated channels of those I received maybe 60 / 65?

I opened up the channel utility on the TiVo and in less than 15 minutes I had deselected all of the SD channels.

I left the list sitting around in Channel name order so my wife and kids wouldn't kill me. That list has long ago disappeared and I no longer have to deal with those dang SD channels!!!!


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

Where I am at we can go to the comcast office and get a list of all the channels they provide and you can see which channels are which, such as which ones are ABC network, NBC, and etc. They also just included the list in this months bill. I guess we must be lucky because just about all the SD channels are between 002 and 100, with the HD version between 801 and 900.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

http://www.comcast.com/clu/channellineup


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## Arcady (Oct 14, 2004)

Really, the SD channels are between 2 and 100? That's always been true.


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## bparker (Mar 5, 2014)

I'm new to Tivo. I'm reading here that the best thing to do in the beginning is to go in the menus and delete the SD versions of channels with HD versions available?


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Yes, but do it through the guide- much easier than the menus.


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## tatergator1 (Mar 27, 2008)

jrtroo said:


> Yes, but do it through the guide- much easier than the menus.


Agreed. This is so much easier to do via the guide. Put the guide in Grid Guide and then use one of the colored buttons (can't remember which one right now) to sort the guide Alphabetically by Channel Name. This will group all the duplicates together and you can quickly identify them. If you arrow over such that you highlight the channel number in the grid and hit "Select", you'll get a dialogue box where you can remove the channel from list.

This is the easiest way to eliminate duplicates, IMHO.


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## bparker (Mar 5, 2014)

Thanks for the advice. These forums seem very helpful for things like this.


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## WhiskeyTango (Sep 20, 2006)

bparker said:


> Thanks for the advice. These forums seem very helpful for things like this.


They are. You are likely to get better and more helpful advice on this forum than from customer service. If you have any questions or problems with your Tivo, I'd advise posting it here first. There are MANY knowledgeable folks here with first hand experience.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

dianebrat said:


> The standard way to do it is to take a cup of your favorite beverage and just remove the SD versions of the channels you get in HD, tahdah.. no more SD numbers to remember:up:


Yup. That's the normal way to do it. Works great. You can still get to the SD version if you know the channel number, I've done it a few times just to check and see if the SD version was having a similar problem to the HD version (they pretty much always do, all the issues are way upstream of Comcast).

I still can't remember most of the channels I watch. I have a general idea, and then use the guide from there...

I nuked my SD channels in about 10 minutes. On Comcast, SDs are double and triple digit, and the HDs are quad. The only issues I had were that sometimes I didn't realize I got HD versions of certain channels I never watch/ have never heard of. And BTN threw me for a loop, as it's an HD channel with a triple digit number... figures ONE channel has to be different!


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Fios has a simple rule: HD channel # = SD channel # + 500. There are a few exceptions, but it holds for 95+% of channels.

Hopefully, someday in the not-too-distant future, the SD channels will go away, and the HD channels will move to their rightful numbers. In the meantime, yes, it would be nice if TiVo did this mapping; but no, it doesn't.


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## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

All this talk about doing it via the guide sounds like extra work for the way I do it.  I also pull up the Comcast lineup of the HD channels and delete anything that isn't HD from the menu interface that's been there forever. If it's not in HD, I don't care that I may not get the channel... I don't want it anyway.  

Here, they used to all be in the 800's but now they spill over a bit into the high 700's and the 900's, and we don't get a few of them with the Digital Starter package like NatGeo and such, so that's why I need the list to make sure I also remove the channels that we don't get.


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## ort (Jan 5, 2004)

Man oh man, do I wish I had seen this thread a few weeks ago. I spent way more time sorting through my channels than I had to. Wish I knew that I could delete them from the guide.

Great tip!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

laria said:


> All this talk about doing it via the guide sounds like extra work for the way I do it.  I also pull up the Comcast lineup of the HD channels and delete anything that isn't HD from the menu interface that's been there forever. If it's not in HD, I don't care that I may not get the channel... I don't want it anyway.
> 
> Here, they used to all be in the 800's but now they spill over a bit into the high 700's and the 900's, and we don't get a few of them with the Digital Starter package like NatGeo and such, so that's why I need the list to make sure I also remove the channels that we don't get.


You must be lucky enough to get almost everything in HD... we still ESPNU that's SD only here. Also, AJAM is not in HD on any Comcast system...


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## laria (Sep 7, 2000)

I don't know if we get those in HD or not... it's not that we get everything in HD, it's just that I'm not interested in keeping the channel if it's not in HD.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

laria said:


> I don't know if we get those in HD or not... it's not that we get everything in HD, it's just that I'm not interested in keeping the channel if it's not in HD.


It depends on what teams you follow. Connecticut, for example, is on ESPNU a dozen or so times throughout the season, including tonight. Some sports and teams are on RSNs, other ESPN channels, CBSSN, etc.


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