You can do what I did; get rid of all the cable boxes in your home and replace with a DVR like Tivo. Yes, I still have to pay a fee for the cable card but it is considerably less. While it's true I cannot get pay-per-view events and on demand from my cable company that is one of the reasons why I have a DVR and subscribe to Netflix.

In theory you will not be paying for box rentals for the rest of your life. Even cable companies will like to eliminate these boxes in the near future and route everything a different way. Cable boxes are not usually profit centers for cable companies. The ill-functioning boxes plague cable companies with having to make service calls, swaps, and faiilures.

Sounds Good to me!!! What happpened to the good old days when you just plugged in the coax to the back of the set and all your channels were there? I know we have HD today and that complicates things -but it sure would be nice to just plug in the cable and have everything you pay 4- HD- PPV and all the good stuff including the guide - without messing with a converter box ! They should just have it built into the TV! If you need to subscribe to TimeWarner cable there should just be an application on the set to tune into the channels you pay for.

That was the while idea behind Cable Card. Slip a simple authorization card into your TV, and access premium digital channels. But due to a lot of early compatibility issues combined with the fact that cable companies couldn't offer PPV or On Demand on them, they have basically fallen by the wayside.

Which is what the whole NEW version of Cable Card was supposed to fix: all the interactive applications and revenue sources that cable companies want, without the trouble of cable boxes.

But I'm not even sure the local cable companies around me would go for that. Rogers seems to enjoy their cable box rentals, and have even found new ways to slip in advertising. Although we are allowed to buy the boxes and don't have to rent them month-to-month if we don't want (although they still ding you for a $3 "digital service fee").

Time-Warner's Scientific Atlanta converters will work anywhere as long as the serial number is consistant with those they use: SAB------. It is up to them to add that nine digit alpha ID to their system. But they have no need to as long as they can charge rental. If you have 3 tvs, 3 boxes...they can charge you $28 rental especially if one is a DVR. That is over and above the subscription rate for the services added. And as far as the tech paying $180 for a los unit, I can personally say I was being charged $800 for 2 'Lost" boxes that eventually showed up on different accounts. I had turned the equipment into the warehouse and was given the receipt which I misplaced. The warehouse lost theirs and I was being charged until the stuff showed up. I had told them to simply shut the boxes off and they refused. I waited 6-months for the issue to be resolved.

It's like the old Bell Phone, the big ugly black thing that was made by Northern Electric, that cost Bell about $50, that they rented to you for $2.50/month.  You could have the same phone for 20 years and it would cost you $600 in rentals, making a nice tidy $550 for the telephone company.  I think the only reason they quit doing it, was that there were too many people who had a phone that quit, and called for service, after all if it's Bell's line, Bell's equipment and Bells phone, then it's Bell's problem. 

Cable boxes are the same deal, you can bet that if you can buy the Box for $200, that cableco doesn't pay anything near that for it, probably $25 direct from the factory in China.  However they do need to pay to have a service technician replace it, when your service stops working.  The technician, the truck, the fuel, probably costs $200 for the service call.  It doesn't take very long for the service calls to eat up the profits on the box rental.  The problem for the cable companies is that there is no ISO standard that these boxes need to comply with.  So the cable company will pick a manufacturer and a couple of models, make sure their equipment works with that, and everyone else can just get stuffed.

If there was an ISO standard, or even a national standard that all boxes needed to comply with, then the TV manufacturers would probably include the proper circuits in the TV, you hook the cable up, call the cableco, give them the ID number off the back of the TV, they update your billing info and turn the service on.

Rogers must be getting desperate for new customers. I had cancelled my cable about 6 years ago and I just received a card from them saying they want me back and are offering a free HD digital box if I trade in an old satellite receiver, even though I never did have Bell. In the fine print it says I must sign up for a 2 year contract. I think they are losing more and more people to OTA and FTA.

Why do those guys bother to scramble at all?

Sort of fits into the Canadian CableTV vs TVStations about payment.

They scramble the thing, then you pay to unscramble the signal, and it still looks lousy...

Yes you absolutely can furnish your own box. TWC has a page describing simple steps to connecting. ie you must call Tech Support and give them the MAC address of the box which is on the back usually.

Most of our clients up here (Toronto) own their cable boxes.
Typically you have to "register" the box with the cable co.
Your paying for the packages, they just have to activate the box from their end.

Obviously from the other posts, this isn't as easy to do in different areas with different cable co's.