Digital Cable? Why?
I'm a simple guy. I don't necessarily need the latest technology, especially if it's more annoying than the previous tech. I also don't need a lot of TV channels. In Montréal I just had basic, analog cable. That was just fine, and I have a TV tuner card in my box and I could watch TV from the comfort of my chair.
Now I move to Brooklyn and my only choice for cable is Time Warner. Fine. So I'll just get Internet and super basic analog cable. But they don't offer analog cable anymore. In fact they're completely turning it off come January 15. The replacement is digital cable, which requires some sort of a set top box, which is just another large piece of hardware taking up space and I wouldn't be able to change channels using the computer, let alone PVR type applications. There seems to be a standard called CableCARD to allow you to not have a cable box, but there doesn't seem to be tuner cards out there that work under Linux and take these cards. I find this all really annoying. No wonder people turn to Bittorrent for their TV.
Now I move to Brooklyn and my only choice for cable is Time Warner. Fine. So I'll just get Internet and super basic analog cable. But they don't offer analog cable anymore. In fact they're completely turning it off come January 15. The replacement is digital cable, which requires some sort of a set top box, which is just another large piece of hardware taking up space and I wouldn't be able to change channels using the computer, let alone PVR type applications. There seems to be a standard called CableCARD to allow you to not have a cable box, but there doesn't seem to be tuner cards out there that work under Linux and take these cards. I find this all really annoying. No wonder people turn to Bittorrent for their TV.