“Cable TV operators are replacing coaxial cable with fiber, especially between headends and clusters of several hundred homes. This HFC (hybrid fiber/coax) net can be either one way or two way. Several telephone companies are also installing HFC to deliver video services, or video plus telephone and data. But fibering that last gap to the home—ranging from a few tens of feet to a few thousand—remains elusive. Aside from costs, dominated at first by lasers, a major technical challenge was video. … Also, each TV or VCR requires an expensive converter (still an issue) if all video is delivered digitally.”