The cable TV service companies appear to have monopolies on converter boxes. Telephone companies have been known to lease and sell telephones to their customers, but the customers can always go to electronics stores and by their own telephones (bypassing to need to pay monthly telephone leasing fees).
If third party cable TV converter boxes were widely available, customers would not have to pay leasing fees to cable TV service companies.
What do you do when you own the box and it dies? How about when the cable company adds more channels you can't get without buying a new converter? Do you have any idea of the life expectancy of a cable converter? I used to work for United Video Cablevision at their Cincinnati, ohio office, and i repaired, modified, updated, reprogrammed over 10,000 converters in four years.
Probably more a case of the >79 channels being digital fare. Digital cable and analog share the cable, but the receiver is different.
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