Well, we knew it was going to happen eventually, but finally we have a date. Comcast Nashville has finally said when the switch to fully encrypted digital cable will happen, September 29th. This means that even my new TV from just a few months ago that was digital capable will no longer be able to pick up anything other than the local network TV unless I get digital tuners. So I'm going to have to get one of those Ceton InfiniTV 4 cards to keep my PVR going and adopt Media Center 7.
I remember when I was a kid and my dad split the cable where it came into the house and ran a line to another room and made a big fuss over not telling anyone because we were supposed to pay per outlet. Having to have a tuner from the cable company on each tuner you use is performing an end run on the FCC reg that disallowed charging per outlet. Considering that until they recently dropped CNN HD and TBS HD from the clear QAM (non-encrypted digital), my TV worked just fine with digital cable, there is no reason for them to force folks to use these digital decoders except where the subscriber has only analog TVs - same as when the digital broadcast changeover happened a few years ago. I can absulutely understand having to have some sort of decrypter for premium channels like HBO or Showtime, but TNT or USA??? Get real!