Sure, they want you to get so fed up with their service that you'll switch to digital service, at a lot higher price.
It's still the same old Time-Warner business model of crappy quality on the lower service tiers. I first ran into it in 1982, when they built their 72 channel dual trunk system in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was amazing that 'Trunk A' would suck, yet 'Trunk B' was MUCH better. They were built at the same time, with exactly the same equipment. I worked for United Video Cablevision at the time, but several of our techs lived in their service area.