Nice setup. A 27" display sounded big when I ordered it, but the reality makes me envy your 40" TV.

What's your cable system? Not sure it matters, but I can only speak from my experience with Comcast. Which has less to do with Comcast than with the choices your local broadast stations make.

The stations got to keep their 6MHz bandwidth in the changeover, and the digital means that they can divide their bandwidth up lots of ways. The NBC affiliate here broadcasts 1080 on their main channel, and also the weather on one dinky 480 channel, sports on another, and a 480 version of their main programming. It was a like a stock split for every TV station in the world.

I'm guessing you were parked on the station's low-def channel, and moved up to their hi-def version. You switched channels, but it was the same programming at a different rez, so it would've looked like a resolution upgrade. Kinda cool.

It wouldn't generally work out like that on my Comcast system, because for some reason they've shuffled the channels, and none of the stations' subchannels are grouped together. But your cable system keeps them together, then it would work like that.

That's one theory. Maybe your cable system is keeping the old analog channels around in parallel with the digital. They don't have to, but it would make customers hanging on to their old analog TVs happy; no converter box.

Anyway, congratulations on finding the hidden HD, Bowser.