Wave Broadband → Purchasing Wave's set top boxes?

I want to know if the set top cable boxes that Wave uses can be purchased and used on their system, instead of being forced to rent them? Renting 5 boxes a month will costs me $25 in rental fees. I'd rather pay more upfront now to own them in order to save money down the road. Can the same exact boxes be purchased through any third parties?

I don't think they do yet, but as soon as the FCC's all digital push is in full effect, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to buy boxes at Walmart . . .

What if I were to find on Ebay, online, etc, the same exact model cable boxes that Wave incorporates? Would they work on Wave's cable system straight out of the box or are the cable boxes first commissioned ahead of time in order to even work on Wave's system? I'm wondering how Wave would react if I got my hands on some aftermarket boxes and then walked into their office requesting to have them commissioned.

I'm 99.9% sure they'd say Hell No. I could be wrong.
Don't waste your money buying a box on eBay. If it's a Motorola digital box more than likely it's stolen from one cable company or another. I don't think those set top boxes are purchasable by retail consumers. If you happened to have one that could bypass the encryption and get all of the channels . . .That's a whole other illegal ball of wax.

Pretty soon, you won't need a cable box as you'll be able to use a cable card in your TV or a cable box of your own purchase:

»seattlepi.nwsource.com/b ··· s05.html

I'm not impressed with the current "Cable Card" technology available. Sure you don't need to rent or buy a set top box, but you will give up all server side content (On Demand) and have no access to PPV (Pay Per View).
The cards fail 50% of the time or more and need to be replaced.

i saw two surfboard 5100 at the st.vennies for 5.00 each a piece....and one at a yard sale for 10.00 just look around you will find one....

They are talking the TV set top box, not a modem for internet stuff.