Waiting to hear from Cablevision: What is the cable card law requirement

Call back and get someone who is a bit more experienced.

From what I read on there, it sounds like even TVs that you can stick a cable-card in will *still* need a box for on-demand channels and cable/satellite-only channels like History, Speed, Sci-Fi, and the news channels.

With cable at least, you CAN'T escape the BOX!

$! $! $! $! (little cha-chings)

On Demand will indeed require a box. All current televisions, and even TiVos, are one-way host devices.

SDV will also require a box, for televisions. For TiVos, SDV will require a box until the tuning adapter is available, probably later this year.

I'm not sure where you're getting that bit about History, Speed, Sci-Fi, and the news channels. Unless they're on SDV, CableCARD will do the trick.

And if you want to record/timeshift/archive anything, then you'll need a box for almost every signal source. Yes, there will be some TVs with internal hard drives but they will be subjected to every content control method imaginable. (as far as I can tell)

Cable cards work fine and get all channels you subscribe to. You can't get pay-per-view or on-demand. The tv (atleast my Samsung), uses the channel numbers are per the provider, and their card decodes your premium (HBO, SHOTIME, Ect.). Cablevision will not let you pick it up and put it in yourself. They charge $35.00 to install and $2.99 per month (in my area - LI NY). Thet have them, but don't like to give them out since there's no real money to be made, like remote fee, or large box fee, and no potential for extra oops live pay-per-view......