Having Comcast issues like us Denver folk, I see. Denver is known as the birthplace of the Cable TV industry (Univ. of Denver has a dedicated museum to the TCI founder), and Qwest can't sell DirecTV packages fast enough.

Keep in mind, though, that the only CEO or company that even partly favors "a la carte" programming is Charlie Ergen, of hometown satellite provider EchoStar/Dish Network. Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Mark Cuban all run like scatterbrained hens at the mere mention of "a la carte."

I'd *LOVE* a'la carte packaging. We're paying for the midlevel DishNetwork package right now, not because we watch all those channels, but because it is the cheapest package that has the channels we DO watch. We're only missing 2 or 3 of what we would regularily watch if we paid for the high level package, but we'd probably lose 5-10 of the ones we regularily watch if we went to the lower package.

But that said, we'd absolutely DIE without the DVR. And as is our usual luck, the buffoons at Dish/Echostar are in a court battle with TiVO over intellectual property and patent violations. An appeals court ruling overturned the lower court's verdict that Dish must shut down all DVR service with less than a month to go. That would have sucked big time.

Yeah, that commercial is amazingly annoying. And the fact that I'm subjected to propoganda promoting cable *while watching cable* makes me that much more frustrated.