Originally Posted by kane

A lot of it has to do with your TV and how the cable company filters things. If they scramble the channels you will need the box, but many cable companies don't actually scramble the channels so you could hook the cable right into your TV, do a channel scan and likely get most of the channels in HD. That said, it will depend a lot on your TV. For example, a friend of mine has two TVs hooked up with the cable directly into them. One of them gets about 75 channels and the other gets about 125.

The box they sell you, in part, is to make sure that you get all of the channels you pay for. Try putting the cable right into your TV and see what you get. If you get all of your channels then you don't need the box.