Also, here's a thought about someone's comment before with high housing turn over and being easier to kill cable to a house by the new people not having a cable box.
I would think, though i don't know, that if they are providing fully digital service now, wouldn't their distribution gear allow them to shut off service for a drop remotely just like the phone company can do? they don't need to go out and physically disconnect the service. I know some providers can do this based on some techs saying they had to do this before. It makes sense that would be true. All providers may not have this ability yet, but i would imagine they will soon.
Actually, here is the deal.
Going all digital meant that, you need to decrypt the signal to get any picture.
That means, that you can no longer just hook up the CATV line to your TV and get a picture.
However, now, since a box is required, what some people are doing is, they have 1 house order 5-6 boxes, and then pass those boxes to their neighbors, who now, instead of paying $170 for CATV, they can each pay $25 or whatever and get the same thing.
As far at the cable company knows, those boxes are all registered, and that is it. They can't tell to which house they are hooked up at.
So, to avoid this, they STILL need to add filters to the line to prevent this type of an abuse.
The FCC wants to have all this done in software, which has advantages, but, the cable companies want full control.
I rather like this new rule by the FCC, but, you can bet it is going to court soon, and it will be tied up.
All content providers are kicking and screaming, being dragged to the digital age.
I rather be able to buy a device like the Homerun Prime, let it communicate with the authentication server, and watch what I paid for, when I want.
The current cable boxes are dogs, and the DVR ones are even worse with double encryption, so you can't play it on any device of your choosing.
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