They're doing this to free up bandwidth to give you other services.

All cable companies have been doing this ever since the switch to digital- you're just noticing it more now because it's getting into the bread and butter

Also the life of the set-top is far from over, theres going to have to be a phase in for this technology, hell set-tops using it will probably outnumber dedicated devices for quite some time...

Plus theres already a cable access standard out there, it just sucks, it's called cablecard and VOD and other interactives don't work with it... but you get all the channels.