I recall the days when the government passed a bill back which forced the cable companies to play fair and allow for users to access the entire library of channels with the use of a Cable Card. The idea was simple: Cable Companies have a monopoly on regions and services for cable television, and were essentially forcing users to rent their Set Top Boxes for a nice profit to them. Cable Cards would allow users to purchase Cable Card-enabled devices such as Media Centers, Televisions, TiVo's, etc, and therefore just pay for the actual television service, instead of renting a box which was awful anyways. Fantastic news, right?

Well, so it was. For a whopping 3 years. Not much has changed with Cable Cards in that time, and still only One-Way cable cards exist in the market, but for the most part, they work great. You are able to tune to all your digital channels, and while you cannot view On-Demand channels, it's a minor price to pay for the flexibility of using a more robust device.

Continue reading at MissingRemote.com