Do you have to rent a box to get a streamed channel?

I just got off the phone with an xfinity rep and she was very helpful and friendly, but I still feel something isn’t right with xfinity policy. The situation is, my mom watches hallmark drama all the time, and just the other day the channel is no longer available. Gets a message this channel is not included in her subscription. I call to find out recent changes were made to channel line up and this was one of them. Let me add some back info here. In order to help them save some money, I lowered there plan to a basic plan, probably around last november. I also returned all the rental boxes and got all Rokus to stream xfinity on the beta app around the same time. Everything was working fine...till now. Now, no more hallmark drama. In order to get it again, we’d have to upgrade to a preferred plan. And according to rep, that channel is only a streaming channel and could only be streamed.  So I said, great, because we only stream anyway with the  Rokus. So here is the kicker. In order to get the preferred plan so we can get a channel that only streams anyway, xfinity requires us to rent at least on box. Does that make sense? I was willing to up the plan and pay the extra for the other perks as well, like faster DL speed, but why should we have to rent a box that will not be used. She said I have to rent a box in order to get the preferred package. Is that true? Xfinity requires you to rent equipment you don’t need if you prefer to use streaming devices like Roku?