I hope that aint true, if it is I need to learn everything I can about running fiber. Contractors going to kill it in the coming years once all that copper wire becomes useless. I can't really see people using cable boxes ten years from now all with all these smart tv's coming out. I even seen a docsis modem that was cable, modem,wifi and phone all in one
Gateways -all in ones, Motorola makes them, netgear, linksys/cisco does you use that equipment to get the service. Motorola and cisco make cable boxes for the services like cox and time Warner etc. There would have to be a joint venture between the tv companies and them to have a super smart tv that wouldn't require a box or cable card. It would never happen the closest thing that will happen is everything goes digital via Internet like hbogo and watch ESPN etc.
But you still have to have a provider, hbo charges say cox 60 million a year or so to distribute and they charge 15 to you. If there was no distributor you'd have to pay like 70 a month just for hbo by itself then pay for Internet through someone else. Think of the quality of shows and the budgets they have and the fights and all of that, they could never give it all away for 15 to you directly they'd have to charge you per movie or show you watch like pay per view.
Although they are a$$hole TW,Cox,Dish they are necessary otherwise we'd pay up the ass for the few networks we like. ESPN changes their rates every 2 quarters cause they get new coverage contacts like Wimbledon or US open etc, that costs them money...the big issue is the huge families Abc/espn/disney, cbs/showtime, Viacom which is nickelodeon, mtv, vh1 and shyt you buy one you basically get them all
That's whys there are basic packages and advanced tv packages