On 5/1/23 08:42, Per Jessen wrote:
Per Jessen wrote:
Here, there are no "decoders" . It would be bonkers - change "decoder" just because you change provider?? Hmm, correction - the big providers (at least one) do offer their own hardware, but the smaller providers rely on consumer hardware - Fritz!Box, Apple TVbox and AndroidTV (built-in) - or indeed your own PC. My provcider recommends Fritz!Box.
Do you have paid subscription channels, Per? How is that done? You mentioned that your TV's have card readers, are these cards used as decryption tokens for paid channel subscriptions? Over here they've used things called CableCards that handle the decryption tasks. We've got one in our master Tivo box that can decrypt six channels simultaneously. There used to be a federal requirement that all cable TV companies support CableCards, but that requirement was dropped a few years ago. Now they're supported as a courtesy, and many companies don't support them at all. They expect you to rent their own proprietary decoders. If our ISP ever drops CableCard support we'll just drop cable TV altogether and go TV via IP. There are still digital over-the-air channels here but we can't receive most of them due local geography. Wolfgang Manor doesn't have line-of-sight to the transmitter sites. Regards, Lew