A:Answer Hey there. I don't know anything about Optimum, but if they are your cable tv provider and they offer cable cards (which they should, I think legally all cable companies in the US have to have that option for customers), then yes you just need to pick up this device and get the cable card from your company. Put the card into the back of the HDHR and you may need to call them up to activate it. Once activated, scan for your channels and boom, you're done (well, kind of). You'll need to decide what you what to do from there to then watch your channels (Fire Tv, Fire St, Roku, Chromecast, SmartTV, nVidia Shield, Apple Tv, and so on and so on). Depending on how fancy you want to get with the system there is a bit of a learning curve if you want to do things like DVR's and such. Good Luck. There are a lot of really great forums our there, and lots of wonderful people that are happy to help out. YouTube though should be your best friend. Watch a bunch of videos related to the equipment that you get, don't just watch one and done.