[Greg B.]

Living in Canada, we had cable early on, around 1970 or so. For the first 10 years or so it was just channels 2-13; that was a big improvement over the 2 english-language and one french-language channels we got OTA. With cable you got (in our town) your local channels, plus ABC, NBC and PBS (no CBS until the mid-80s), plus a community channel, a weather forecast and stats channel (unmanned, just scrolling text), and a newswire channel that was quite popular.

Around 1980 or so our cableco started playing around with what was becoming available by satellite. A rumor was that you could get some US channels if you had a converter, even though those channels were not allowed to be shown here. We picked up a block converter (by Philips, IIRC) which was a silver box about 3"x6"x1" that had cable in and out connectors and a AC adapter for power. It output on the UHF scale, and sure enough, if you cruised that dial there was HBO and a couple of other forbidden channels free for the taking.

Later on those disappeared as Canada's first specialty channels were authorized. Again you needed a converter to receive them, and the cableco installed traps on your line depending on what you were paying for. We stepped up and bought another Philips converter box, this time one with a LED channel display and remote control.

Digital came around several years ago and although there was no reason to get it at first, soon more specialty channels came along that were digital-only. The cableco here used Motorola boxes exclusively. I have been through several as they seem to be finicky. A couple of months ago they showed up at my door unannounced with a DVR box and installed it for a free trial. It probably is worth the $5 a month extra that it costs and I'll probably keep it after the trial.