I finally broke down and upgraded to HD today, I already had the TV but I needed to get the HD receiver from my ‘favorite’ cable company… TimeWarner Cable.  The setup was very easy as I have a good bit of experience with setting up multimedia components for other people.

In order to actually get the HD channels ‘turned on’ I had to call TimeWarner Cable and request HD service.  The service is apparently free but note that there is a monthly charge for the HD receiver.

Still trucking along, all is going well, now we’re watching ESPN in HD.  But wait, whats that in the upper right corner?  It’s an annoying little number ‘2’ as if to signify I’m on channel 2.  But I’m on channel 975 according to the blazing fast Scientific Atlantic receiver and the TV shows that I’m on the HDMI input.

Based on the font and the look of the number I decided that it must be caused by the TV itself.  So I decided to call Westinghouse, yes I have a Westinghouse Digital TV.  I’m sure that your fancy Sharp or your expensive Sony are much better quality but I really don’t see the point in spending all that money based on the amount of TV that I watch.  So spare me the lecture.

Anyway, I called Westinghouse and was VERY happy with the customer service I received.  They had me do the usual things like unplug the TV, unplug the receiver, etc.  None of which really helped, but it wasn’t the resolution or the lack thereof that I was impressed with.  All throughout the call the representative was very happy to talk to me and we had some good conversation about college football of all things!

So the Westinghouse representative recommended that I call TimeWarner Cable to see if it was their receiver that was putting the misplaced number on the screen.  I decided to make use of the online chat feature and was not surprised when the TimeWarner Cable representative wanted me to reboot the receiver.  Magically when it returned from its extremely lengthy reboot, PRESTO, the number was gone.

The moral of the story is this:  if you have a TimeWarner Cable HD receiver and you get this annoying number 2 in the upper right hand corner, you need to contact TimeWarner Cable and have them remove it and/or reset your receiver.

Kudos to Westinghouse Digital for having such delightful customer service representatives.