ok.. so I still havent shelled out the dough for an hdtv.. but while the MIL was in town for christmas.. she picked me up a generic 32" hdtv lcd to mount in the corner of my pool room.

i dont plan to pay my cable company for hd service until i put one in a room that we use more.. but as i let it do the auto search, i see it found cbs, nbc, abc, and fox hd channels and they look great....

so.. now Im hunting to see if i can find espn and/or espn2
the auto search doesnt find them.. but the book mentions i may have to add some manually, and recommends trying the regular channel number with a -1 on the end.. that didnt work.

is there a page that lists these in diff areas, diff providers.. or is there a better way to look?

ESPN or ESPN2 HD won't show up as they are encrypted. If your cable company has Universal HD, you'll most likely have that too.

What is your cable company? Check http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=45 and see if you find your area.

You will only find free channels for free. Anything you can receive locally via antenna in SD/NTSC should be available via antenna in ATSC (although they may not be HD) or possibly over the cable line for free. That's why you can find them, because of the local broadcast. Pretty sure ESPN is not broadcast free anywhere, always a pay channel.

For cable/pay channels, you will need an HD cable box due to their encryption, as Bill said. Plus, you may have to pay extra to get HD versions of channels. That is totally up to your local company. I could try to answer, but I am pretty sure you are not actually right behind me.

mediacom
and yea.. i checked the channel lineup on the back of my bill.. it listed those 4 hd channels as part of the broadcast covered by basic service..
meh, oh well.. the sd espn still looks much better than most of the other sd channels.. for whatever reason.. so it will be good enough until i add another hdtv or two.