Well, this is the last straw...

[Jeffhs]

Have any of you heard from your area's cable-TV provider that they are going to force their subscribers to use cable boxes in order to receive anything at all? I was talking to a customer service representative at Time Warner Cable yesterday and was told that, some time before this year is over, they are going to be doing just that.

To add insult to injury, this representative also told me that the day will come when OTA TV antennas will not work anymore, and everyone, with no exceptions, will be forced to get cable and to use a box if they want TV reception.

How on earth can cable TV operators like Time Warner get away with that? More important, how can they say that regular TV antennas will not work any longer after a certain date? TV stations will be broadcasting their signals over the air for years to come, so I don't see how the cable company can tell me that I will no longer be able to use an antenna after such-and-such a date.

Time Warner Cable is in the process of merging with Comcast; however, they have already adopted one of CC's policies (to eventually force everyone to use cable boxes), and I don't like it one bit, since I do not want a cable box on my TV. It upset me so much that I ordered a Roku streaming video box for my TV, and may well cancel my cable service when (or shortly after) the Roku box arrives.

As the subject line says, this is the last straw. When my cable provider tells me I will not be able to use a TV antenna to receive OTA television signals from local stations after a certain date (which was not mentioned by the representative I spoke with), I have to wonder. Where do these people get off saying things like that? Do they not understand that TV stations still broadcast signals over the air, and those signals are still receivable by the same kind of television antennas people have used since the medium's beginnings in the late 1940s?

The representative I spoke with also told me that this is an FCC rule, that all cable companies will be forcing their subscribers to use cable boxes and will be unable to use TV antennas. Is this true, or is Time Warner Cable just telling me that for no reason other than to upset me enough so that I will cancel my service?