[mythtv-users] can I buy my own digital cable box for use with Time warner digital cable?

Ian Forde ian at duckland.org
Tue Mar 3 10:32:02 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 19:10 -0800, Robert McNamara wrote:
> Firstly, most (all?) US cable providers won't allow you to "bring your
> own box" (although I think they require them to allow it in Canada).
> Secondly, and more importantly, the box would behave identically to
> any other box of that type on a provider's network, as the enabling of
> ports/capabilities/encryption is all set by policies that are
> downloaded from the headend, not locally on the box itself.  In short,
> you generally can't, and it wouldn't help if you could.

I was always under the impression that they're required to let you do so
in the U.S., but the providers will just try to wear you down into not
doing so via disinformation, misinformation, and the occasional
20-minute punitive hold. (That's right Comcast - I'm talking to *you*
here.)

> Which is a bummer.

Indeed. I remember when cable modems came onto the market for individual
purchase.  All of a sudden, my Comcast bill was restructured such that
the cable modem rental went down from around $10/mo to around $2-3/mo
and the other services went up.  The bill was the same - it just
appeared that they didn't want me to get my own box...

	-I



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