I listen to a lot of digital cable music on Time Warner Cable New York, through my hd 600s and the sound is pretty good indistinguishable from the cd. Does anyone know what bitrate or format these stations are encoded in?

nobody knows the answer to this?

Well I'm pretty sure the video is mpeg2.
So I'd guess the audio is probably either mp2 or ac3,
and the bitrate is probably between 192 and 448Kbps.

For DBS systems, MPEG 2 compression is used for broadcast at a bitrate of 192 kbps. I'm sure Time Warner uses the same scheme.

I detect compression artifacts periodically when using headphones to listen to DirecTV, that usually only happens when there are significant bandwidth demands made on the transponder used to broadcast the particular music channel. Also, the sound feels squished and not as open as an uncompressed CD. Though for broadcasting so many channels on limited bandwidth, the sound really isn't bad.

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Pretty big range....

I'd say CBR MP2 224-384kbps (varies between channels, some ****ty ones down to 160kbps ). For movies and stuff AAC, sometimes AC-3 like in Sopranos on HBO.

Video is VBR MPEG-2 I think, very large range of bitrates. Sometimes it's so compressed I wonder if it's low bitrate MPEG-4.

Thanks for the replies guys. The sound quality of the music channels including mtv is surprsingly good, better than the non music stations. That probably goes along with that high bitrate that some of you quoted. It really is a nice way to listen to music and I've only heard artifacts once or twice, most of the time the sound is nearly indistinguishable from the cd on my source, I'm listening to it through an old pioneer receiver headphone jack, which has a lot of electrical noise in the background, so this can be taken with a grain of salt. This is what I have to suffer with until I get my maxed out home I'm taking the plunge and ordering it on monday

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Hey, I'm just covering my bases.