LEWISTON — A wallet-sized device is causing a fuss among local cable subscribers.

The box is a digital adapter, meant to keep programs coming into your TV when Time Warner Cable begins turning off its last analog signals on Oct. 19.

On Tuesday, customers packed the lobby of Lewiston’s Time Warner office on Alfred Plourde Parkway. At about 1:30 p.m., more than a dozen people waited in a line that stretched across the lobby and filled the breezeway to the outer door.

Some held their regular set-top boxes. Others held Time Warner fliers warning people to pick up their adapters.

The company has mailed or handed out 45,000 of the boxes, said Andrew Russell, spokesman for Time Warner New England. And the demand for the gadgets is still growing.

“We expect that response will continue to accelerate as we continue communicating to affected customers the importance of installing their adapters before we start switching to the all-digital format,” Russell said.

The analog-to-digital change affects 90,000 Maine subscribers in 105 communities, from Camden to Waterville and Carrabassett Valley to Poland.

This is the first Time Warner area in the country to make the switch. Other markets, including the rest of Maine, will follow.

“We’re pleased with the response so far,” Russell said. “Our customers are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the digital conversion initiative, particularly the additional channels they can enjoy once they connect their adapter.”

But there have been questions, he said.

People want to know about the new channels, how TVs with digital tuners are affected and why it’s happening, Russell said.

Some of those explanations are confusing, Jeanne Lachance of Lewiston said.

The directions for installation were unclear, she said. When her husband had trouble making it work with her VCR, she called Time Warner’s telephone help line and spent 45 minutes on the phone, and it still didn’t work.

Her son talked with somebody at the company who told her to ditch the VCR and rent a DVR from the cable company for a monthly fee, she said.

She finally worked it out, but it took hours and more help.

“It just keeps changing and changing and we’ll probably get more costs, too,” Lachance said. “I have been with this company (and its predecessors) for 40 years It seems like the more it goes along, the more frustrated people get.”

The cable company is offering professional installation of the boxes for $17.99 per household, Russell said.

But some people won’t need the boxes. If you are a subscriber and your only TV already has a set-top box, you’re all set.

However, most TVs that receive the cable signal straight from the wall will need the new converter. The only exceptions will be for people who subscribe to the most basic cable plan (channels 2-22) and who also have newer TVs with a digital tuners.

All others will need a set-top box for each TV. For a while, those boxes will be free. Subscribers can pick up one or several — one is needed for each TV without a set-top box — at a Time Warner office. Beginning in 2014, the cable company plans to charge a 99-cent monthly fee for each box.

Time Warner says it must make the change — a change already made by satellite TV carriers — to be more versatile. Going digital makes room in the cable entering the home for more TV channels, on-demand programming and Internet bandwidth, Russell said.

The reason is that digital signals aren’t as big as their analog counterparts. The bandwidth required for each analog signal can free up enough room for 10 to 15 standard definition channels or two high-definition channels to be transmitted in digital format, Russell said in an earlier interview.

It will also free up bandwidth for subscribers who receive the Internet and their TV over the same cable.

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