By JOHN DUNBAR and DEBORAH YAO,
> Associated Press Writers
> WASHINGTON - It has been 11 years since Congress voted to break the
> cable television industry's stranglehold on set-top boxes -- the
> devices that consumers need to receive digital programming and change > channels.
> So why are you still paying $5 or more a month for that thing on top of > your TV?
It's because they don't want people owning the boxes. There are a couple things that motivate them. The first is that if you multiply that little $5 fee by the number of customers they serve, it's a nice littel chunk of change.
The second is that if you OWN the box you can reverse engineer it if you so wish.