Sounds like a Skynet design to me. It now controls our food...

As others in the thread have mentioned: The best thing to do is to build your own DVR out of an obsolete computer and connect it to the TV. With a $40 USB dongle you can connect an ATSC antenna (antennaweb.org) to stream to your hard disk. With some software you can setup your recordings (Beyond TV is what I use, but I think the consumer version is gone now). Connect an RF remote to the PC (Firefly). Get a decent video card for at least MPEG2 decoding (MPEG4/H.264 hardware decoder is better though). Put it together and you're basically good to go. For those shows that you can't record, P2P (EZTV). You'll get everything possible in at least 720P without having to watch commercials. I haven't paid a cable bill in 5 years. 5x$1200/yr = $6000.

I propose a Slashdot spelling contest. Gheese.