said by Tymanthius:Not only that, but it would be dumb until there were VERY few analog tv's left in cust's homes.
It's a selling point that you don't need a box.
The cable operators are in a Catch-22 regarding analog television. The marketing folks love that they can advertise that you don't need a box as a competitive advantage to satellite while the data folks would like to be able to use the DOCSIS 3 return carriers between 42Mhz and 85Mhz to allow them to provide higher upstream bandwidth.
In then end, I think it inevitable that operators will eventually do as Comcast has in some of their markets and remove analog TV from their lineup and provide the customers without digital televisions a cheap set-top box.