Re: Do I need to pay the cable company for a (non-HD) digital cable box?

On Tue, 29 May 2007 18:03:20 -0500, Bernie <bernie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 5/29/2007 12:28 AM, dgates wrote:
We've uprgraded to all HD stuff in our main family room, but I find
myself with an extra TiVo (or two), complete with lifetime
subscriptions.

I'm thinking of just hooking up a TiVo to a TV in my office, but with
our Time Warner cable service, I won't be able to get channels above
100 without paying $8 a month for their digital cable box. It seems
like, for that price, I might as well pay $16 a month and just use
their HD DVR. (Yes, the TV in the office is HDTV, but I don't watch
much HD, outside of DVDs anyway.)

That's probably more detail than anyone needs, but I thought it might
affect someone's answer. So, what I'm wondering is:

Do I have to pay that $8 every month if I want the digital cable
channels above 100 (BBCA, FMC, TCM, TRAV, etc.)? Or could I just buy
some box and stop paying the $8? It seems like it would have to be
under $100, shipped, to be worth the effort.

Any thoughts?

You might want to wait a couple of months before investing any money in
a purchase. The cable companies are mandated to begin providing boxes
that use cablecards and that mandate takes effect in July. It only
applies to the deployment of new boxes. At that time it won't be
surprising if boxes from other vendors, or even from the existing
vendors, become available for purchase. And of course Tivo is working
on a more affordable box as well after their Series 3 fiasco.

http://www.cable360.net/cableworld/video/21753.html


I think you may be right.

What are you defining as TiVo's "Series 3 fiasco?" Simply the fact
that they released these boxes for $800, and cancelled the option to
upgrade your lifetime subscription before they started lowering
prices.

I have two TiVos, with lifetime subscriptions, and I would *love* to
move those subscriptions to some Series 3's, but I'd appreciate a
larger hard drives and a lower price.
.

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