... I will instead just deal with leased TW box. At least they replace it if it dies.
And you don't have to deal with cable operators not issuing bi-directional cable cards (so you can do all the VoD stuff etc). In my service area with TWC, the cable cards will descrable but you can't do VOD or order PPV with them. From what I read the S3 TiVos are supposed to support the nextgen cards but no cable operators are offering them because they want people to rent their stuff for $17 (here it's $7.95 box rental plus $10 service fee).
I want VOD as it was one of the few things I liked when I had Comcast, but Dish Network's 2 tuner HD DVR was relatively cheap and the service is free (with their top tier programming package). -- Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
That's not correct. All cablecards support two-way. S and M cards. The host device has to have two-way capability. Cable companies want to rent boxes only because they want you to have access to impulse type services, ppv, vod, etc. The benefit of the Tivo supporting the M-card is, the M-Card supports mulitiple streams vs. the S-Card which only supports a single stream.
