"TVs Requiring Mini BoxTVs that connect to Cox service directly from a cable wall outlet aren't ready to go all digital. Even if your TV is labeled "digital ready", you'll still need to connect with a mini box.
TVs that connect using video equipment, like a Cox Advanced TV Receiver or CableCARD, are ready to go all digital and don't need a mini box."
There's much bullcrap in there technically speaking, but it is clever and disguised. It is obviously written to snowjob the 90% of the sheeple that have no clue.
The key is "TVs that connect to Cox service". The rest of it implies that TV's connected to a coax wall outlet are NOT digital blahblahblah. In reality most TV's these days days are perfectly digital ready. What they fail to stress is that this is a COX implementation of total encryption, rendering perfectly normal TV's with analog/digital or digital only built-in tuners obsolete, little more than LCD computer monitors.
Many details found in this thread, one of thousands.
An employee or knee-bending sycophant says this ...
"Currently Cox Does NOT encrypt:
- The low quality Analog channels, this includes most 4:3 SD channels 2 thru 99, but Cox has been slowly removing some of those Analog channels. (The removal of the rest of the Analog channels should have happened in 2012, but Cox has been very generous and has left them until this year.)
- The Local Broadcast Digital HD channels and Local Digital SD sub-channels.
Currently Cox Does already encrypt:
- All Non-Local Digital channels, whether 4:3 SD or 16:9 HD
The two things changing are the encrypting of the Local Digital channels, and the complete removal of the 4:3 SD Analog channels.
The complete removal of the 4:3 SD Analog channels is absolutely necessary and should have been done a few years ago. Every other major provider in major cities has already done this.
The encryption of the Local Broadcast Digital HD channels and Local Digital SD sub-channels, is overkill in my opinion, but does keep freeloaders from getting Internet and Free TV. It also keeps Cox from having to send out technicians to place filters on drops, and keeps people from attempting to do a DIY illegal cable hook-up, which could effect your service negatively, especially if it was one of your neighbors.
Do you really want all your neighbors getting free TV when you pay $90/mo for it?"
Buttloads of snarky bulls!t. Reminds of Microsoft in their Vista and then Windows 8 propaganda periods with Steven Sinofsky and his team of destroyers.
In that last sentence, amusingly and presumably with a perfectly straight face they try to pit you against all your neighbors, while literally forgetting that it is YOU who now get to pay for their new encrypted implementation to stop the alleged thieves!
Even if it is a futile effort, each customer should contact their House Rep and two Senators ( that's 3 reports per customer ) and not ask, but demand an antitrust breakup of these COX suckers. It as an elaborate bait and switch that renders your private property inoperative without sending them more cash. It would be like Standard Oil switching to some new formulation that rendered car engines obsolete ( or similar metaphor ). I see they do have one cable competitor in place in some areas, and no doubt they would point to them, but read some of the crappy remarks in that thread to see what they really think of them. They are merely a foil for this monopolistic and predatory practice ( kinda like Microsoft using Linux as a "competitor", "no monopoly here!" ).
Remind me who in Congress we need to thank for the cable and other information delivery consolidation again. We are literally awash in protected monopolies now, too big to fail because of the extent of their lobbying. I used to think Teddy Roosevelt was crazy, but not anymore. These companies really do see their particular zones as farm fields full of sheep to be sheared at will.