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Time Warner Cable Box Rental Inspired Antitrust Lawsuit
EmagGeek writes "Matthey Meeds, a real-estate agent, was so irritated about having to pay the monthly rental fee that on Tuesday he filed an antitrust suit against Time Warner Cable and its 84 percent owner, Time Warner Inc. The suit alleges that, by linking the provision of premium cable services to rental of the cable box, the companies have established illegal tying arrangements. 'Time Warner's improper tying and bundling harms competition,' Meeds' lawsuit states. 'Since the class can only rent the cable box directly from Time Warner, manufacturers of cable boxes are foreclosed from renting and/or selling cable boxes directly to members of the class at a lower cost.' I pay Comcast over $25/mo for my two DVRs. I'd love to just be able to buy them or build my own. I can't wait to see how this unfolds."
Tivo and Vista Media Center both offer cablecard solutions. These bypass the need for cable boxes for most users. And before you start, there are solutions for switched video coming as well.
This will all be supplanted by VOD over the Interweb.
Bringing the lawyers in is really weak. Enjoy your 3 months of free DVR rental as part of your settlement offer.
I really hope this goes a bad way for cable companies. They have had a tight lock on cable boxes for too long, we have been stuck with the crappy quality cable boxes from motorola and SA for too long.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I hope for the best in this situation. It would be nice to have a system where you can build your own PVR, because, I have SageTV on my computer, and it's vastly better than and PVR box I have ever seen. It only works with the first 70 channels that are sent over plain old analog cable, but that includes most of the stuff I watch anyway. Most of the stuff on the digital only channels is movie/sports channels that I don't pay for, or time shifted (other time zone) stuff that I don't need anyway since I use SageTV. I still pay for the rental of a box, but it's only $4 a month, as it's just a receiver, and not a PVR. Things could be better, and I hope they get better in the future, but as long as I have my analog cable, I'm happy with things the way they are.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
We should join the venture and do this with Verizon FIOS.
I'm paying out almost $30 a month extra for 2 set top boxes and a DVR because they're required. We can't even watch the 10 "normal" channels anymore on a STB free tv. I have 2 more TV's i'd love to hook up but dont want to spend an extra $10 per STB per month.
David needs to take down Goliath again.
It sounds good, but in the end, this will go nowhere. It's cable, you don't have to have it, and therefore he is choosing to pay $15 a month. Besides if the cable card option is available, does it really matter if it is hidden on their site, he can already buy another box. He should have waited until Feb '09, then he can get all of the grandma's with 25 year old TVs onboard.
...are the vast numbers of people over the whole of this world of ours who *pay* for TV services that *also* have advertising included.
Here in the UK, you don't get much of a choice to not pay the TV License fee but at least everything the BBC broadcasts is advert free. And likewise, I will happily sit & watch the free cable/satellite channels that have advertising breaks.
But I definitely *WON'T* pay to be advertised at.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Would a consumer-positive result (IE: Time Warner loses) also have any kind of side-effect on the issues surrounding the cable "Broadcast Flag" controversy and digital T.V. cards for PC's? Admittedly, I stopped following that entire scene a year or two ago when the flag came to life, so it may have already been resolved, but it does make one wonder what far-reaching effects a positive ruling in a case like this might have.
To quote the great philosopher, Fezzik: "I hope we win."
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Way back in the mists of time, the UK telecoms market was a government-granted monopoly - initially granted to the Post Office, later spun out into a separate company.
Go back far enough, and anyone who wanted a telephone was obliged not only to rent the line but also the telephone itself (which was listed on the bill as a separate item that you rented). Someone did take the telco to court over this and won - and today there are any number of telephones on the market you can plug in.
Furthermore, the cable company (another monopoly...) always goes to great pains to stress that the cable box (and/or cable modem) is free, you're just paying for the line it connects to. I don't doubt that these two are related.
If they lost their box rental monopoly, they'd simply boost service rates to make up the difference. It would seem the cable companies want to eliminate boxes, anyway. Last week Cablevision won their long battle with the networks over the right to offer DVR functionality from centralized servers. Their motivation: cutting their biggest capital expense...those boxes might work terribly sometimes, but they're not cheap, and charging $7 a month to rent one means they don't recoup the cost of one for over a year.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Maybe it's a US thing, but I would assume that if I subscribe to a service, that either I should be able to use my own equipment or the equipment be included for free or as a one-off expense.
If this pans out than MythTV will finally be a viable solution. MythTV is a great system and works splendidly as a DVR and it has its own browser and you can do pretty much anything linux can do from your remote and they are cheap because they use standard parts. So you could probably build your own set top box for 300 dollars. Moreover if these set top boxes were mass produced than they could be really cheap. Even though they probably wouldn't have too many bells and whistles but they would be cheap and you wouldn't be forced to pay a monthly fee for a POS device.
Either way all this bundling is killing us. Whether its cell phones or cable boxes they are sapping all our money.
They'll just raise the monthly rate to compensate if they can't charge a rental fee for the box.
They'll just raise the monthly rate
Fixed that for you.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So while despite the prevalence of open standards in the cable industry (hello DOCSIS and QAM) and their wide support among the manufacturers of cable hardware, that it's okay for them to give me no choice but to rent hardware they approve of? That's like saying that AT&T's forced rental of phones in the past was a perfectly valid business practice. But then again, I suppose "It's telephone service, you don't have to have it."
It's *not* alright for the company to charge me to rent the hardware, and then to charge an "Access fee" that corresponds with the technology the hardware utilizes. On my bill, I pay a rental fee for my HD box, a rental fee for my SD box, and then I pay for the channels I subscribe to. But wait, since I'm an ignorant consumer and don't understand that digital capability allows you to deliver a greater number of differentiated services over the same network and with less hardware (which lowers the cable company's costs), they're going to charge me not only for those channels I subscribe to, but again based on the "class" of the service I'm getting. So I pay a "DVR" fee. And a "Digital Access" fee. And more totally and utterly made up bullshit.
Indeed. I think every modern service should remind me of the old saying, "Ma Bell's got you by the calls."
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I've been using Snapstream BeyondTV for many years now (since 1.0). I LOVE it, but up until last month, there was no way to capture the encrypted QAM channels. Now I can, it just costs me $250 (Hauppauge HD-PVR) plus $8/month for a digital cable box +$11/month for any extra ones if I want to record more than one channel at a time. There was never a legal problem with recording that stuff, and now there isn't a technical problem--now it's simply a financial problem. They can't stop us from recording the content, so there's really no reason not to allow us to record it properly (ie. without taking the nice digital signal and converting it to analog and then back again).
"O'Connor, smash the window." "Why me, Bigboote?" "It might be boobie-trapped!" "Oh!"<smash> -Buckaroo Banzai
As a Time Warner customer in Northeast Wisconsin, not only do we have to pay the rental fee on and box, we also have a Franchise Fee that shows up on our bill as a line item. Basically $2 +/- that Time Warner charges us and then turns around and pays to the local government for allowing them to be the only provider in town.
Cable TV as we know it is circling the drain already.
The whole idea of sending a 750 MHz wide signal (yes! nearly 3/4 gigabit!) of signal to a home, where only 3-6 MHz of signal is actually going to be used is just plain silly.
I cannot wait for IP-based television to become predominant. The television and video entertainment markets as we know them are going to be stood on their heads, and it could not happen to a nicer bunch. (You can already see this happening with Apple TV and the RoKu NetFlix player...)
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I get tired of these sort of tactics. Fortunately, there's competition now here in Austin, so I'll be switching to AT&T with NO DVR rental fee and no cable modem rental. (But then again, their high speed internet is $10 / month more than Time Warner, but Time Warner charges $10 / month for the modem...just on principle alone I'll pay AT&T more.)
Meeds' lawsuit acknowledges that Time Warner now offers customers the option of leasing a so-called CableCard, a credit card-size device that performs the same security and descrambling functions as a cable box. But the suit contends that Time Warner promotes the cable box as superior.
How is it anti-competitive behaviour if they offer an alternative. I don't believe the law states anywhere that they have to be very vocal about this alternative, just that it needs to be offered?
It costs me $1.50 a month to rent that cable card. I also see a lot of people saying why do I need a cable box with a digital tuner in my TV. Most of those TVs, have cable card slots in them. Again, get a cable card, now you're not paying $7+ a month to rent a box you don't need. Also, if it's Time Warner's equipment, they should have the right to charge a rental fee.
I remember as a kid, every piece of telephone equipment (like answering machines, etc) all came with a little sticker saying something like "not approved for connection to the public telephone network". The legal fiction was that you could only use these things on your internal network.
[FUCK BETA]
The reality is that devices with cable card support, other than the Tivo HD, are almost impossible to find, and getting the cable company to install and properly configure cable cards is often an extended trip into customer service Hell.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Ever notice that they also charge you for the remote too that comes with the cable box. And you need the remote to access certain functions not available on the front of the box. What is up with that?
In some localities (like mine) you can't get a TWC cable card because TWC is the only cable provider and thus they can permit refusing to give you anything unless you go along with their plan. I just got TWC because, again, it's the only thing I can get in my rental property for a reasonable price and TWC knows it. They have a butt-ugly modem and a very customer-unfriendly SA box. Anything but the free-to-air channels (regular or HD) are scrambled to any other receiver and no, I can't get anything to decode them from TWC.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Companies are scared to death of actually having to advertise the price they charge, so that's unlikely. They LOVE $5 fees that they don't have to advertise, so they SOUND like a good deal in the ads, and only after subscribing would you realize you've been screwed.
Anyhow, they could have done that in the first place, and bundled the boxes for $0, if not for the above. But now that it has gone to court, and is on record, expect a second anti-trust lawsuit if they try that. That's how they got Microsoft.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Again, what problem is it of Time Warner, if no one sells digital boxes with cable inserts in your area? It's not. Now, the issue with TWC getting the cable card to work, I can understand. Having a cable card, yes, it was a bit of a pain to get working with my TiVo box. Definitely a few calls into my local office. But eventually they got it working, and now I am all set. But that support and setup does need improvement.
I agree, that is bullshit. However, that is a problem with your local division, not TWC as a whole. Why should my division be punished for actions and policies that your division has? I agree, that action should probably be taken, but that action should be taken against your local division... not the whole company. You would actually have a better chance succeeding, because there aren't nearly as many lawyers protecting that one division as there are protecting the whole TWC umbrella.
Speaking as someone who works for the cable industry, this is a dollar short and a day late. The cable industry has already taken steps to increase competition in the cable box marketplace. http://www.opencable.com/ The Opencable platform is going to be the next generation of the cablecard technology (which already suits his needs btw). Cablecard was created to allow cable subscribers access to the digital channels on their own devices. Basically cablecard is a hardware secuirty token that allows access to the cable network. Opencable takes this a step further by defining the schema for interactive, two way services. This means that not only will you be able to access the cable channels (like cablecard) you will soon be able to access VOD and other "interactive" services from any device that supports this open standard. This is just another frivilous lawsuit brought about by somebody who is totally ignorant of what they are suing over. I hope this guy spends thousands of dollars only to find this out. Next time he should turn to Google before he turns to his lawyer.
So you are also a fan of the phone company not allowing you to own your own phone, right? Things were so much better when AT&T owned all phones, and you couldn't hook up anything neat like, say, an answering machine to the network.
Get a clue. This is purely a consumer-hostile move by the cable companies to keep a higher revenue stream coming in, built on the back of their government-granted (aka granted by you) rights of way to provide service.
Would you be happy if you let your neighbor park his car in your driveway from time to time, and he took that agreement to start selling parking there? Would you be happy if you had no legal recourse to it?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
On direct TV each box after the 1st is $4.99 a mo for any box. Dish and cable make you pay more if the other box is a HD or DVR on top of the box free.
Comcarp web site makes it very hard to find the true cost for of the box fees with pick the boxes with out a way to tell you want you need to pick for the 2th or more box is it the HD fee + digital outlet fee or the HD fee + the DVR fee Just the digital outlet fee and so on? And they want $10 - $30 per box up front based on what box you pick. And the HD boxes don't even come with free HDMI cables. Also there may be a per box remote fee.
ATT used to have 4 boxes for free now they want $5 per per each box after the 1st one.
also on top of that some of them make you get cable guard or you will pay truck roll fee / some have even tried billing you $400+ for a box that is not working after a storm knocked your house down.
It costs me $1.50 a month to rent that cable card. I also see a lot of people saying why do I need a cable box with a digital tuner in my TV. Most of those TVs, have cable card slots in them. Again, get a cable card, now you're not paying $7+ a month to rent a box you don't need.
No, you're paying $1.50-$4+ a month to rent a cable card you don't need. Your solution, well, isn't.
I thought all the fees were laid out in the contract they sent you. It's too bad that people are impulsive, and don't research what they are buying into. But it's hardly something that you can't find out about before you sign up.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
TV Guide channel is useless in the digital cable days WOW! cable dropped them. Even if you still have them they don't show the full digital cable line up.
If your locale is under the coverage of the FCC you should report them. They do not have the option to "not supply" cable cards - it's not something they do to be nice it's something they do because they legally have to.
From wikipedia:
The "rare exceptions" I believe come into effect when you have a very small local cable co. for whom it's considered "too expensive" to provide them. TWC does not fit that category! Almost all areas of the US only have one cable company, that doesn't affect whether CableCards should be available.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
What you are comparing is apple to oranges. The difference with phones, is that consumers have a multitude of choices when it comes to phones. You want a Panasonic, get a Panasonic. You want a Vtech, get a Vtech.
There are no choices with cable boxes. Cause the companies that make the boxes are under contract with the service providers to only distribute their boxes to those companies. But that isn't stopping Panasonic from designing and distributing a cable box to the general population that is sold in retail locations. The reason is, is because Panasonic doesn't see cable boxes as a lucrative market. No other company at the moment does.
Why is it Time Warner's fault that no other company wants to develop cable boxes and sell them in retail locations? It's not. Time Warner Cable (or any other cable provider for that matter) cannot control Panasonics decision on whether or not to make and sell cable boxes.
You tell me to get a clue, but you are the one obviously oblivious to basic economics and business management. A company is not going to go into a market unless they know they can make enough profit to justify the costs of being in that market. And right now, no other company sees the benefit of joining the cable settop box consumer market. That's not Time Warner's fault, and they aren't working in a way to stop companies from doing that. They aren't helping either, but it's not their responsibility to do so.
Paid $300 up front for my DVR, then the setup fee, then the activation fee, then I still have to pay a fee each month for the rental of the box (their excuse is that its a $700 box and I got it at a discount), then I have to pay for the DVR service. Then I paid the $40 one time fee to activate the USB port so that I could use MY external HD, which they cut access to if I am just one day late on my bill.
The other thing, that everyone needs to realize, is that that $7 a month is called a box rental fee, but that's also to cover support costs for that box. When a customer has a problem with the box itself, are they calling Scientific Atlanta, or Time Warner Cable? They call Time Warner Cable.
So fine, get your own box, but then, just like the phone company, if a customer is having technical issues with that cable box that is unrelated to Time Warner's cable signal, then that customer calls the manufacturer of the cable box.
If consumers would grow a pair of balls and realize that TV isn't really worth this much money Time Warner would eventually have to lower their rates or be content with less subscribers.
I seem to remember reading that some cable modem providers require all residential high-speed Internet customers to subscribe to some cable television package, especially in areas where the phone company provides no high-speed Internet access. You're lucky that this package is "lifeline" and not "basic cable".
In Switzerland, the largest cable operator (Cablecom) is slowly but steadily switching from analog to digital. The problem is that the analog channels, which are broadcast in "clear" on the cable are replaced by the same digital channels that are encrypted and require the mandatory rented Cablecom box to be watched.
A consumer association challenged this up to the federal legislative body, requiring that the basic package be unencrypted (premium pay channels could remain encrypted) and that consumers can chose their decoder (current encryption is Nagra, so simply providing a decoding card instead of a box would be possible). Cablecom replied with completely bogus allegations that not using encryption would prevent it providing "interactive services" and make it "less competitive" because no encryption standard exists for cable.
Unfortunately, the Parliament believed all this crap, hook and sink, and the petition was dismissed without much discussion.
You've got to have encryption support. The hardware that goes into this (cablecard or smartcards) require a conditional access module running on the settop box. Encryption providers will not be handing out their modules to just any homebrewer when they make money off their box certifications.
Another thing to point out is the license holders wont be to happy. A major part of the STBs cost is in MPEG2, Macrovision, and a number of other technology licenses!
this is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine.
I pay $20/month for online dvd rentals, and haven't had cable in about 6 years. I never looked back.
Sure, DVD rentals work for films and scripted series, but not as well for time-sensitive live broadcasts like news, weather, and sports. True, news and weather are easy to get on the web or over free-to-air TV. But what do you do for sports, or do you just happen not to have a sports fan in your household?
I've installed FiOS twice now (Verizon will tell you their technicians installed it, but I was able to come to an agreement with the boys in the van) and I can tell you how it's laid out.
First, they bring glass off the nearest pole into a sheltered area with a 120 VAC power outlet, such as a basement or garage. If they can figure out a way to get power to an outside wall under an overhanging eave or porch roof, they probably will, unless you insist that it be inside. I like to run the glass through the wall right next to the power service entry (since there's no EMF issue to worry about) into the basement. Leaving the boxes outdoors benefits only the Verizon techs and not you! Your gear will last longer indoors.
Verizon techs prefer to use premade fiber links, since glass termination is time-consuming and requires patience and training that many of them don't have. This might result in them stuffing huge loops of glass inside walls or behind your furnace (or even cable-tying a dozen loops to the phone pole) if they don't happen to have the right length in the van with them. Don't let them do anything ridiculous.
If they can mount their gear on a wall with studs on 16" centers (as in standard western platform construction houses) they will use a pre-configured all-on-one-backboard unit that includes a small BBU (battery backup unit) and UPS (uninterruptable power supply) as well as an ONT (Optical Network Terminator - usually an AFC/Tellabs box). The ONT will be connected via cat5 to an incredibly crappy Actiontec router/firewall/wireless unit. Lately these are MoCA enabled and consequently you might find it difficult to source more reliable equipment to replace the Actiontec. Verizon warranties it, but will not replace it for free if you lose or destroy it. If you have a home network or do a lot of simultaneous connections expect to reboot the actiontec frequently.
If you've got ancient stone walls and timber framing, or something equally alien to the Verizon tech mindset that will not easily accomodate the single-backboard rig, they can mount each of these items separately. If you are mounting on a stone wall you may find that the Verizon tech's idea of a secure mount is different from your own!
Once they've installed the ONC and verified connectivity to the CO (central office) they will disconnect your existing copper telephone line and run a line from your existing POTS demarc to the ONC. The CO operator will type some stuff into their phone switch and your existing phone number will be reassigned to the POTS port on the ONC reasonably instantaneously.
WARNING: The existing copper POTS line entering your house has some sort of lightning protection - typically there's a ground rod driven into the soil next to the entry point. When the tech kicks you over to glass, the glass line does not need any such protection for (hopefully) obvious reasons. If the copper is cut back to the pole, great, but if that's not possible for some reason MAKE SURE THE OLD LINE REMAINS GROUNDED. Best to get rid of it entirely, unless it's buried.
If you get Verizon's TV offering you'll get set-top boxes and a DVR (usually Motorola, I'm told) as well. I don't do the TV thing so I'm less qualified to speak to that.
The verizon tech will want to install a CD full of hideous Verizon bloat and spyware onto at least one of your computer systems, and will probably try to tell you that you can't use Verizon email or web services without doing so. Since I don't use any operating systems that they support, I declined to do this, and used firefox on linux to register my system. Their web interfaces are very badly designed and rely heavily on cookies so you have to fiddle with your noscript, adblock and cookie management settings to make it work right. I also had to set firefox to identify itself as IE6 running on windows.
The BBU is rated for eight hours voice-only - if the ONC is configured to also provide internet
...all of that would be valid and true if:
IF you could actually buy your own equipment and then
install it yourself without any interference or help from
the cable company.
The problem is that you can't do that. This entire
cablecard bullshit setup is designed specifically to
prevent that.
No more going to Best Buy and picking from a selection
of 30 VCRs, going home and just plugging that into your
coax.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I had a similar disagreement with Comcast. On their website, their terms specifically stated "Many of our customers have purchased cable boxes from retail outlets to use with our service" yet every single Comcast customer service rep I talked to denied their service worked without one of their cable boxes.
I ended by finding a cablebox at a flea market (retail outlet?) and they would not let me use the service with it. I wish I could have found a lawyer to help me with that.
Satellite is just as bad if not worse. Let alone the fact that HDTV has opened up all new fee structures that these companies can impose.
Case in point. I actually canceled Dish TV yesterday. I have been a subscriber for nearly two years. What went wrong, well I bought a HD TV. Now they have these great packages costing $24.99 and up for HD only. Guess what, I can't get them because their "billing" system can't handle the switch and won't be able to until 2009. If I want HD from them I not only have to pay for a new dish, sign a new contract for two years, I also will be paying $10 more than I currently do. Since my bill is $32.99 with fees for DVR and a second receiver box my bill already hits $45.99 but to get HD I have to pay nearly eighteeen dollars more than if I were a new customer (the 24.99 isn't a teaser rate)
So I looked at Comcast, nearly sixty dollars PLUS box fees PLUS fees for the HD connection and an additional fees for each extra HD connection. Direct, far worse than Dish. Even if you buy an HD package they have a ten dollar HD enabling fee and receiver fees.
These guys are following the airline/cell phone route. Quoting a price then laying on all the "required" fees for regulatory issues and rentals of require equipment. I can't use my own box with Dish or Direct without first having theirs in the stream.
I would be more than happy to pay for the DVR, its cheaper than Tivo and works just fine, yet I don't even have that option.
Funny thing is, I might actually end up buying the blu-ray I mentioned in a previous post as being overpriced (Wal-Mart has a Sony for over $100 off suddenly) and rent from Net-Flix. Perhaps if the XBOX gets its blu-ray finally I can not only rent Blu-ray films, play games on my HD tv, but I could also stream it, all for a lower monthly than any Cable/Satellite company and only have my equipment in the loop
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Around here, we define premium as HBO, ShowTime, Starz, etc. The only commercials I've ever seen on these channels are adverts for themselves
On the "premium" movie channels, I've seen 100 minute movies with 100 minutes of commercials. Try removing all NES commercials from The Wizard (1989) and what do you get?
I recall that here in the US of A as well.
The whole idea of sending a 750 MHz wide signal (yes! nearly 3/4 gigabit!) of signal to a home, where only 3-6 MHz of signal is actually going to be used is just plain silly.
The 750 MHz signal is sent to a whole neighborhood. How does the cable operator know which live streams someone actually wants to watch, unless the cable operator sets everything up on demand? There are already delays in waiting for the next keyframe when tuning in a channel; treating every channel as an on demand stream would just make the delays longer.
I cannot wait for IP-based television to become predominant.
What in television is not intellectual property-based?
This will have an effect on all other local cable co's.
It doesn't make sense about set top boxes.
You can buy one, but they are not fully legal, because it may be a hot box.
Yet they offer you the option to purchase your cable modem from them.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Full disclosure: I work for a small cable operator.
Ok, what if he wins. TW still has to pay for the costs of those boxes. The ones we use cost up to $400 from SA if they have a DVR. Instead of spreading the cost fairly among all subscribers, everyone's price goes up.
The guy can try to sue for openness, but that's exactly what the FCC has tried to push with the CableCard system. It hasn't worked. The free market isn't there because it's not a sustainable business model.
In the year we've been on digital, we've had one person ask about using a CableCard because his TV was supposed to support it. He finally found out that his TV was built on a draft version, and wouldn't work without a hardware upgrade.
Anyone here ever performed an upgrade on their TV?
If TW was violating the FCC rules, I could see this guy having a case, but he can't even find hardware that will support the CableCard lock/key system operators employee to secure their system.
And so this is another cost to DRM... and it's such a waste. Not only does it break fair use, but it's pointless. You can't protect digital content and still allow people to watch it, unless you install DRM hardware inside the brain so that you look at a screen full of static and it's decoded into "Batman vs. Spiderman II - Pest Strip Terror" inside your head.
(maybe I shouldn't give them ideas)
But you also can't get a party line anymore. The system was closed and the phone company was fully responsible for all devices connected to the network.
Cable is the same thing phones were 80-100 years ago: one line feeding all receivers. Now, the phone company has two copper wires going to every home. If you don't pay your bill, they cut off your two wires, and it doesn't affect anyone else.
Using the same logic as this lawsuit, my power company is milking me by not letting me use a third party meter.
Is this really the case in the USA? Any company that tries this in the UK and gets a complaint registered against them with the Advertising Standards Agency gets hit with fines and forced to withdraw their advert. Mind you, shops here are also required to include any applicable taxes in their price stickers too...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought all the fees were laid out in the contract they sent you
That argument only goes so far. With the wireless industry you can't even get that until AFTER you've signed the contract and usually AFTER you get your first bill. Hell, around these parts you can't even get a straight answer from Time Warner on what their rates are (never mind the fees) without calling them and haggling with a sales rep. Guess publishing them on the website is asking too much.
I don't think it's asking too much that these companies just offer a rate so people can easily do comparisons between different offerings.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So why don't Motorola or Scientific Atlanta sell their set-top boxes directly to consumers? You don't seem particularly disturbed by your comment that "the companies that make the boxes are under contract with the service providers to only distribute their boxes to those companies." To me that sounds like a restraint of trade.
Isn't it at least an open question whether the requirement that I lease a box from my cable operator constitutes an illegal "tying arrangement?" I'd be more than happy to buy a Moto DVR direct from Motorola or from a retailer instead of leasing one from my cable operator. Why shouldn't I be able to do that?
He can use ONE SINGULAR alternative STB.
That wasn't the situation that this whole Cablecard thing was supposed to create.
I should be able to not only get a PVR from more than ONE vendor,
I should be able to get an entirely different STB. It should not
be like pulling teeth regardless.
NO STB and NO cablecard should be required.
I should be able to get a "boxless" HD cable service just as I could with SD.
Anything less just gives the local monopoly the opportunity to f*ck around with you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You really don't get it.
The problem is that you can't get TW cable *without* renting a box from them. I actually tried this last spring -- I have a nice 2-tuner TV with side by side picture out of picture, which is much better than the shitty Motorola cable boxes that TW rents. I asked to start up cable service, but I didn't want or need a cable box. Unfortunately, their system *does not allow* them to bill someone for cable alone without the box.
Your lesson in basic economics and business management was very nice, but completely irrelevant to the topic.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Indeed it is. As long as they have some note in the fine-print (unreadably small, and only on-screen for a couple seconds), they're in the clear.
Recently, what they're doing most often, though, is advertising their "new subscriber" price, which is very, very low, but applies only for 6 months, after which you are forever paying the full price, 4X higher.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It's fine that the rental math comes out so great. It really is. In fact, it's so fine that, based on what you're saying, they ought to be able to wipe the floor in a fair match with retail boxes. Further, since the value is so excellent, if they competed openly with sold boxes, they ought to be able to raise their rental rates and for people to still perceive it as a bargain.
I suspect the real reason they don't want to let you buy your own box is because it will make it that much harder for them to limit theft of services. In their own boxes they can place whatever detection/deactivation chips are necessary to keep a lock on the signal. Harder to do when there are 20 different manufactures adhering to slightly different specs.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
What are you, stupid? You have all those choices with phones because there was a lawsuit that forced AT&T to allow them! If there were a similar lawsuit regarding cable -- such as, say, this one -- then suddenly a whole bunch more companies will start making devices to hook up to cable!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I like your YouTube commentary series, though I must admit I'm a bit baffled about what the kid is busy doing -- is it some sort of self-improvement effort, or does he really just have that much time on his hands? Whatever the case, you've given me some good laughs. I quite enjoyed the DDR episode. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
And some of us Merkans value our posteriors enough (and have sufficiently different ideas of what constitutes "entertainment") that we simply don't watch TV.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
While Satellite is a cool technology, it is hopelessly one way, and VOD is the coming thing. A while back when I had Comcast, not only did I get a bunch of channels, a lot of on-demand programming was available. That is really nice as getting to decide on a movie and watch it right now is more spontaneous than having to capture something to watch later, or watch what is on now. In this respect I think cable has more to offer than satellite, at least in town where the cable is available. Out in the country, satellite is still the solution for many people.