OK I am livid mad. So mad I want to nuke comcast but I don't have any nukes. Lucky them.

THIS is what I am doing. I do not want to stop doing this. This is what our family has been doing for 10 even 15 years for some of us. I do not want to downgrade and I will not be nickle and dimed with "add on fees" I will use my rapidshare and bit torrent before I take that dive.

OK I have a computer with 4 tuner cards. this is so I can record multiple programs at once. I could probably live with 2 tuners since only about 5-10% of the time do I need more than 2 to get everything I want.

we have 3 Tivo's in the house. (lifetime subs) they are dual tuner tivo's

we also have 2 other telvisions in the house.

With comcast this was painless. distribution amp cable to each room splitters where needed EVERYONE IS HAPPY.

well comcast just GUTTED analog. its gone. 24 channels left and about 18 of those channels are news/talk/religion/local/shopping crap.

yeah a big FU from comcast. so OK digital right no problem I plug in a digital tuner. NOTHING not only did they go digital they went PROPRIETARY digital so you MUST rent their boxes. Over my dead body. any idea what that would cost at $5 a box and it would render every tivo and computer tuner in the house USELESS.

MORE money and MASSIVE downgrade. again over my dead body.

OK what about dish. if i could get 4 DVR's it would still be a massive downgrade from what we have now but it would be WORKABLE.

No joy. $7 for each box after the first and $6 per DVR. do the math thats $21 in boxes (and we all get ONE TUNER each not 2) and $24 in DVR fees PER MONTH.

Over my dead body. I said what if I buy all my boxes third party outright full retail. NO JOY still have to pay the fees. I said NO THANKS and hung up.

SO I realized something at the Campground we use they use DISH network but we just plug a cable line into any cable ready TV and we get channels.

SO clearly they have SOME gizmo somewhere that takes the "stream" coming in from the sat system and "parses" it out into an NTSC Cable Stream.

ie assigns each dish channel to a "channel" in the normal NTSC bands and broadcasts that over "cable" just like analog cable.

I do not care if its legal or how much it costs or how hard it is. My MORAL compass is clear on this. I will glady pay them their $40 a month for service. I WILL NOT PAY THEM for boxes and dvr fees on a monthly basis.

so how do I do this? how do I get ONE sat box and parse the channel stream to NTSC cable channels and then use my existing cable network in the house to run up the tuners in our devices ?

Suggestions? I know it CAN be done. question is how do "I" do it.?

Thanks!