Astound → [CATV] Ditch Your Cable Box

said by DSL News :

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Time Warner Cable Will Let You Ditch Your Cable Box
by Karl Bode 09:22AM Friday Sep 13 2013
Incoming Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus told investors at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch media tech conference this week that Time Warner Cable customers may soon be able to ditch their cable boxes ...
Marcus told attendees that "over the course of the next year or so" the company will be "knocking down some of the current obstacles" in the way of keeping users from solely using a Roku, Apple TV Xbox 360 or other third-party device to access video without a cable box.

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It would sure be nice if RCN let us do that.

Alternatively it would be nice if there was a device you could plug into an HML HDMI port that would serve the function of a set top box (i.e. authorizing cable access), and then you could use your remote. Kind of like a modern day cable card.

I did.

Setup:
HD Homerun + Samsung Smart TV + KDLinks NMT

or

HD Homerun + Samsung Smart TV + HTPC

Perhaps a few words might be helpful. The website for HD Homerun says it is for unencrypted channels on cable of which RCN has none.

Hi Paco. I use an HTPC along with a Ceton Corp tuner. No cable box and Im able to control the recording of content from anywhere (phone/ipad) and view quite a bit of content when Im traveling. The Ceton tuner uses a cable card that you get from RCN.

Speaking of ditching your cable box. Whatever happened to Open Access? This was a farce by the FCC. Just try to purchase appliances that use cable cards? My first HDTV had a cable card in it. When I went to replace it, guess what? You couldn't find a tv with CC access.
Anyway, in this article, it states that when the FCC allowed the cable operators to encrypt their most basic service, they also put in place other measures that the cable operators had to agree to to ensure Open Access would still be available for the consumer. I wonder if RCN is going to follow this?

»www.theverge.com/2012/10 ··· n-access

HD Homerun is for encrypted channels.
It has three tuners and a cable card slot.
It has one Ethernet port.
You can watch TV on more that one machine connected to a network.

You can use network media players such as Egreat of KDlinks instead of computers.
You can use Samsung Smart TV and the original TV remote.

You can read more by yourself.