I've heard that in July 2007, a law goes into effect REQUIRING cable/
satellite vendors
(e.g. such as Comcast) to allow me to purchase my OWN set-top box
(rather than
requiring me to RENT a set-top box from them, to be able to receive
upper-channels,
digital-content, premium-package content, HDTV-quality content, etc.

I also think I read (on wikipedia) that to be able to readily grab a
useful data-stream to
be able to save TV-program content to a file, requires a firewire port
(which my RENTED
set-top box from Comcast does NOT have).

So, some questions are:

Where might I PURCHASE set-top boxes (that I could use in lieu of
renting a set-top box
from Comcast)? Any specific MODELS of set-top boxes that you might
recommend
(e.g. that have such a fire-wire port or whatever is needed to capture
the MPEG-2 stream)?

TIA...

Dave