(iverson's) currentbuzz: Totally cool technology -- cable-card

And the competition among third-party DVR manufacturers may actually mean--finally--that you could walk in to Best Buy and choose from a selection of affordably priced high-def DVRs that work more or less identically whether you're a Time Warner, Cox, or Comcast subscriber, anywhere in the country. And while these third-party boxes may have drawbacks--such as no access to video on demand--they may also offer advantages to the cable companies' default boxes. For instance, models from both Digeo and Motorola are said to be capable of streaming recorded programs throughout multiple rooms of a home, and Motorola has even demonstrated the Slingbox-like ability to stream programming to a cellphone

Source: crave.cnet.com

If you have a projector and big screen instead of an HDTV like I do, this is really interesting. I would love to have my own box. Ideally this will happen along with the FCC mandating that cable companies allow users to choose their feeds ala menus, not pre-configured packages.