My contract with Dish Network expires at the end of this month and i'm thinking about switching to Time Warner Digital Cable. They have all the same channels and the price will be about the same. What caught my eye however was the fact that you can rent an HD decoder box from them for about six bucks a month -- which sure beats the hell out of paying like 600 bucks for one. I think this is the box you get. I've got a Sony KP53HS30 TV which is 4:3, so i don't really know how the picture will work out.

Anyhow, I just wanted to see if anyone here has this service and how it is.

I've been thinking about that too. I have a 65" Mitubishi Diamond HDTV. I'm really not into paying for the HDTV decoder since my TV has one built in.

However, I think that with a 4:3 HDTV is kind of a waste...don't you need the 16:1 ratio to view it properly?

Of course, if you want to record that HDTV, perhaps to watch it when you're actually home, you need to go buy an expensive VCR. By the end of the year, and perhaps by the middle of the year, we'll have a variety of HD-TiVo devices from several manufacturers -- worth waiting for.

Yeah, we were considering a 16:9 set originally but decided that most of what we watch is still in 4:3 format. I'm wondering if the box that they are going to give me has the ability to mess with the format.