OK, just so there's something in the Illinois bucket.
After years of nothing being done to many of our cable systems physical plants due to being sold to different companies (we had Cox, Jones Intercable, TCI, AT&T and finally Comcast), Comcast finally decided to spend money on infrastructure. The Comcast system that I'm on has it's head end in North Chicago and for HD we can get, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, InHD1, InHD2, ESPN and Discovery HD Theater. For our local channels we get CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, FOX along with WGN, we don't get the local UPN station which does HD.
Comcast has also made the Motorola 6412 HD DVR available for $9.95, only $4.95 more then a HD tuner box. It's not a Tivo but for the price it does a nice job.
Like all cable systems, your analog channel quality will vary, for me it wasn't acceptable but better then last time I tried them then the prior install. When they mirror all the analog channels on the digital tier I might give them another try.