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Actually, you can thank your neighbors for the fact that cable companies are going to all-digital. This change is basically happening for one reason: Many of your neighbors want more HD channels, so given that a cable can carry only so much data, to get more of what they want, the cable company has to provide less of what you want. And evidently your neighbors pay more for what they want than you pay for what you want so what they want prevails. That's what you should expect in a consumer marketplace.

You can also thank your neighbors for the fact that more and more channels are being encrypted, because many of your neighbors wouldn't think twice about stealing cable service if it wasn't digitally locked down.