help - new TV - scan channels - weird channel numbers

[cparker]

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For Buffalo, NY, TW cable
This is at my mother-in-law's house. Her son bought her a new Sony Bravia 32" LCD and never hooked it up. So yesterday my wife and I shopped for a TV stand, assembled it, took out the old TV and furniture and set up the new one.

This Sony Bravia has just one RF input labeled Cable/Antenna. I hooked up the cable. There is no antenna so I don't have to deal with that.

Autoscan channels results in both analog and digital stations being found.
Channels 2, 4, 7 (local ABC, CBS, NBC affiliates) look like absolute crap. The TV tells me these are NTSC. Channel 53 (Hallmark) and 69 (Bravo) look ok. Since OTA 2,4 and 7 are possible, do those channels look like crap because the TV OTA tuner is mixing them with the cable 2, 4, 7?

But here's the kicker. There are channels over 100 that appear to be the digital HD equivalents of the locals showing on 2,4,7 etc. There are music channels showing up as (something like...) 107.20, 107.21, 107.22, and so on.

TV has LOTS of tuners. NTSC, ATSC terrestrials, Analog and digital Cable, QAM.
There doesn't seem to be a way of selecting only certain tuners when scanning for channels so it scans all tuners for all available channels

I believe she only subscribes to basic cable as she has no digital STB and isn't really interested in getting one. She's 81 and "just wants to watch TV". I would love it if she could just press "2" on the remote and be watching local channel 2 and have it not look like crap. As it is now I have her "Favorites" menu using the (what I believe to be) QAM as channel 2, but it's hard to explain to an 81 year old woman that for channel 2 she has to press 113.2 ....

I don't have cable. Can someone help me decipher what it is I'm seeing? And is there a way to help her get a decent picture on 2, 4, 7 ?

[_zed]

Sounds like the TV is picking up the Clear QAM channels. On my newer TV the broadcast HD channels that I get via QAM are remapped like the OTA channels. So broadcast channel 2.1 (as that's how ATSC channels are now) shows up as 2.1. But on an older TV that I have, it does not remap the channels, so 2.1 is found at 85.364 (or something like that).

Oh, as for getting the NTSC cable version of 2, 4, etc... if it's not coming in clear, it might need an amplifier or something (newer TVs seem to be more sensitive to this than the old ones). You should call the cable company and have them come out to check the signal levels. But it might also just be with that older TV you didn't see how bad the SD feed really looked due to the quality of the TV.

[Islandguy43]

02 - 93.1
04 - 93.2
07 - 113.3
17 - 113.1
23 - 92.1
29 - 106.1
49 - 106.2
51 - 107.4
ctv - 107.2
cbc - 107.3
sabres - 92.2

Here are the channels I am receiving on QAM. There might be a few more, but I don't bother with them. CTV and CBC are only in 480i.