Cable Box Independence Day
Well, not exactly. But you may be hearing more about CableCard (see one article here that explains things better than the CableLabs site) in the near future.
Starting July 1st, if you have a CableCard ready TV (which you probably don't, but will be able to purchase in the near future), you can pop in one of these cards and get rid of your set-top decoder box. This means you can use your TV's tuner, rather than a separate box, to watch analog, digital, or HDTV (assuming your TV can display them). Of course, you must be a subscriber of these services but you would no longer need the extra box to watch them via cable.
Note that the CableCard is unidirectional, meaning that such services as Video-on-Demand or various bi-directional TV guides would no longer work. Further, while CableCard ready DVRs will have a slot, it appears you would need to have two CableCards to use them to watch one scrambled channel on your CableCard enabled TV (or using features such as picture-in-picture) while recording another on the CableCard ready DVR.
In addition, I'm not sure where you would get the cards other than from your cable provider. Said provider would probably have a monthly rental charge for the cards. What that cost will be I don't know but when its available, you will need to determine whether it's worth your while to switch or just stay with what you have (which would continue to operate as before).
Aloha!