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How Much Does a Cable Box Really Cost? The Industry Would Prefer You Don't Ask (latimes.com)
The FCC chairman insists that he is driven by a market-based approach to regulation. In a story, published Tuesday, an LA Times columnist uses the simple example of set-top boxes to argue the agency has, instead, been captured by the industry it regulates. From the story: Spectrum TV and internet customers will see their rates go up again in November. Among other increases, the broadcast TV surcharge will rise to $9.95 from $8.85 a month, and the monthly fee for a set-top box will jump to $7.50 from $6.99. It was that last charge that got my attention -- and got me thinking about the economics involved. How much do cable boxes actually cost? Why do their monthly fees keep going up when the cost of similar technology, such as TVs and computers, goes down over time? Not surprisingly, my attempts to answer these questions were met with stonewalling from industry players.
Spectrum, owned by Charter Communications, the dominant pay-TV company in Southern California, clammed up real fast when I asked how much they pay for the boxes they lease to subscribers. Nor would it comment on how much cash flow the boxes generate, or why fees keep rising even as the number of residential TV subscribers dwindles (down 66,000 more in the third quarter). Dennis Johnson, a company spokesman, said only that the 7.3% higher box charge in November -- more than three times the inflation rate -- represents a "modest increase" that is "comparable or even lower than our major competitors."
Spectrum, owned by Charter Communications, the dominant pay-TV company in Southern California, clammed up real fast when I asked how much they pay for the boxes they lease to subscribers. Nor would it comment on how much cash flow the boxes generate, or why fees keep rising even as the number of residential TV subscribers dwindles (down 66,000 more in the third quarter). Dennis Johnson, a company spokesman, said only that the 7.3% higher box charge in November -- more than three times the inflation rate -- represents a "modest increase" that is "comparable or even lower than our major competitors."
That was one reason I stopped using Cable TV services, I could not take the recurring cost of a cheap ill-made box with a terrible UI.
I would way rather spend more one time on my own box, as I do with cable modems - at least then I haves some control over quality and will not be paying a huge amount over the lifetime of use.
I have to think that a lot of people do not like TV services gated through a crappy cable company box and that is doing a lot to increase the number of people unsubscribing from cable TV content.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They are making scads of cash on these things and the price goes up because they need more and more revenue because the cord cutters are killing the top line.
Personally, I use only a cable card, which runs $4/month and get up to 3 channels of TV at a time. Still this is highway robbery, Cable Cards only cost a few hundred dollars and I know they have a pile of them just sitting there and they charge enough just for service to more than pay for this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There is nothing complicated about a cable box. Comparable electronics with a tuner and an HDD for DVR storage would likely run in the $35 to $55 range wholesale. Maybe lower.
What kind of a luddite still has a cable TV box?
Once a design is approved for manufacture and at the volumes they order, a cable box would cost them pennies. Then someone has to write (re-write) the firmware, and someone has to take that thru any updates (hah!). But the volume still swamps all the other costs.
I mean that is what a Raspberry Pi package is going on Amazon.
The cable boxes can't be that powerful for as slow as they are.
Need some extra ports thou.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
So, what's the going price for an FCC chairman?
Have gnu, will travel.
The FCC chairman insists that he is driven by a market-based approach to regulation.
Oh, he is driven by a market-based approach. Whatever the market will bear that allows more money to be funneled directly to his and his crony's pockets is what he'll let slide. If he were smart enough to realize that there's a tipping point as you up the ante where people will stop paying in, he might have a different outlook, but he's a typical politician/businessman and sees the next quarter only. And he can only calculate the next quarter by taking the direct results of the previous quarter and multiplying them by whatever increased price has been decided on. Nobody ever thinks about the potential for the market to shrink, despite countless years of evidence that this market is, in fact, shrinking.
Had this issue pop up recently.
A few years back customer opens shop. After 3 shitty comcrap modems, we buy our own. Comcast at the time has no issue, we have a static IP set and it's set for 3 years. FF to last week. Customer can't connect via VPN, lotta other people depending on that static IP can't connect. I call comcast and they start troubleshooting.
Apparently they changed their policy. No static IP if the customer is using their own modem. Nope, we can't have our old IP back, big FU. We have to pay $19.95@mo + $10 modem lease to get a static from them now. Never mind that this is a bonafide business account. Cable companies are worse than lawyers and politicians, and that's a pretty low bar as is.
No one really knows but it's between $750 and $1200 per box.
I call BS on this.
If Apple can sell a 64GB Apple TV 4K for $199 and make a nice profit on it, there's no way it costs Spectrum $750 - $1200 per box.
When I was at Comcast in 2010, the boxes ran Java 1.3. At the time, Java 6 was the current version.
They probably still run 1.3.
No one really knows but it's between $750 and $1200 per box.
Ha! No.
Charter (Spectrum) is worse. No static IP without a business account. No customer-owned modems allowed for business accounts at all. They claim it's to "maintain the quality of their business network" as if they're using different channels or nodes for business customers.
Screw the cable/satellite TV box, that client model should have went with the dinos a decade ago. We ditched ours the beginning of 2016 and haven't looked back. All we have now is an Internet connection and a hand full of 'smart media' boxes (IOS and Android based) that cover all of our needs and even more with all of the services out there.
but reading their SEC filings was a great way to tell how much TV & Internet really cost them. Last I check (which to be fair is probably going on 6 years ago) my $78/mo internet was $9/mo. In the interest of maintaining that sense of fairness I'm now paying $99/mo for the same service.
Anyway, anyone done it more recently? I doubt it's changed much.
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People can't find out how much it costs, so they don't pay.
Hang on; are we talking about the gateway/modem, or are we talking about the set-top box/tuner? 'Cause the latter has a BOM cost well under USD$100, remote included.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
We pay $4,50/month for our cable box lease(fees included) because it's the only box we have and it's some sort of "promo" where the first box is cheap.
We can outright buy one for about $250... and still have to pay a cable box fee of $2,50/month for some insane reason.
So we figured "well the box itself would take 4 and a half years to pay off and we'd still be paying 2.50$ anyway, so overall it'd take more than $10 years to start "saving" money on this, not worth it."
Java 6 =~ Java 1.6. They changed their version numbering scheme, so it's only 3 revisions newer. Of course it is still a 6-year gap.
I've built things with essentially the same hardware (DVRs).
If any cable company is paying that much, they're getting ripped off. (That's possible, companies often pay way too much for stuff.)
For the non-DVR version, the Roku IT is similar hardware for $129 retail (maybe $80 wholesale). The unit the cable company rents you might have a nicer case, so let's be generous and call it $100.
For the DVR version, a reciever / DVR like the Humax FVP-5000T is about $200 retail.
These monthly rentals are such a scam - and a cha-ching for the cable companies. When we installed voip TWC (Now Spectrum) provided an upgraded cable modem to replace the old Motorola we'd been using for years. I don't know what happened to the Motorola Cable Modem (which was rented from TWC) but I assumed the technician took it with him. A couple of years later we have to move, and TWC claims we owe them $125 for the cable modem we never returned. They are billing us $125 for something that costed around $60 at Best Buy - and not only that, we'd rented it for so long I realized we more than paid for it. But TWC were total a$$holes about it and we had to pay. Bunch of crooks - I am so for creating community internet and destroying these turds business...
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Almost nothing.. perhaps 20 bucks tops. Licensing to 3rd parties, who knows.
but somehow i fail to see cable boxes mentioned in this text:
"Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."
maybe get rid of all the parts of your website that is in conflict with the GPDR?
How much do typewriters cost?
It's not the 1990s anymore.
So don't pay. Take them to small claims court.
Outraged! The same problem happens with movie theatres. The price for tickets keep going up although their actual printing cost couldn't possibly be rising. Same with video game Blue Rays, can you actually tell me it costs $60 to make a Blue Ray. Unless by some strange and absurd process unknown to any other industry they are using higher margin products to offset the negative profit associated with other product offerings... Hmm this is genius!
They charge more every year because their executives are only held responsible if they don't squeeze the entire population for maximal profits. They are never held accountable for anything their families should be hung for, because their own accomplices and employees are legislators in charge of deciding whether what they've done is good or bad.
Until they are dragged out into the streets and dealt with, things will continue getting worse.
YMMV I'm from Australian and our language is slightly different. In australia a large provider of internet/cable services pays $74.15 AUD ($50 USD) for a cable modem wholesale, and $19 AUD ($15 USD) for an ADSL modem wholesale. With regard to decoder boxes for TV, I don't know the actual price, but I can purchase them for less than $100 AUD retail. For what it's worth until recently I worked for the company and had direct access to this information
It seems like they are bundling other costs into the equation, line maintenance and so on. Perhaps they segment out the network as their cost, but the cable from the road to your premesis as your cost, and the cost of the termination inside the premesis, and so on. Add the Modem/Box to the equation and it might explain the costs.
In addition to that, you might be subsidizing other areas that have high modem breakage rates, for example high humidity, or prone to lightning areas, so on balance the cost is right, it just seems high to you. They may present you with the averaged cost for their total area.
I'm fairly certain you're off by an order of magnitude - $75-120 seems much more reasonable for what you get, and what comparable devices cost; Especially true in Canada where you can rent or buy the cable box (but you can only use theirs). The buy option is free and clear - you go to the store, pick up the box and pay. They don't ask if you're a subscriber or anything. You can do anything with them - use them, blow them up, disassemble them, etc.
If those boxes really cost several hundred bucks to make, the cable companies would certainly not make it possible to you to buy it for 1/10th the cost with no obligations to be a subscriber.
$23 to $125, before the former SciAtl business got sold to Technicolor. DVR and MoCA made for more expensive boxes, but volume mattered just as much in the final price.
Consider the garbage Samsung STBs Charter's pushing now are even cheaper than that, and you can see why they love them some rental fees.
While it's always *possible* to build something more expensive than it needs to be, you used to be able to buy a CableCard tuner retail for around $100.
According to the old regs at least, the cable companies were banned from providing equipment with integrated encryption. They had to use a removable CableCard, so that instead of leasing a device from them you could purchase your own device and transfer the CableCard to your own equipment. The thing is, very few people knew about this, and the cable companies didn't go out of their way to inform them. The kind of people who knew are the kind of people who are cord cutters anyway.
The ban expired in 2015, which not coincidentally was when a new, encryption integrated cable box appeared on my doorstep -- which was quite manifestly a cheap P.O.S.; I'd be amazed if it cost the cable companies more than $20 to acquire in bulk. CableCard boxes are no longer available from retailers.
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Ya same thing with comcast/xfinity. Just another way to milk us. I wish when municipalities allow these jokers to use our poles that they'd have the foresight to think about this kind of situation. It'd be like AOL saying you can't use any HAYES compatible on their dial up. Absolutely no reason for this.
Compare to Cox. Buy your own modem, provisioned in 10 minutes with your static. Effortless. In New Orleans. At half the cost of Comcast's similar "offering" in Fort Lauderdale--which requires either a broken Cisco Puma 6 or a broken Netgear piece of junk that they couldn't even provision. The refused to give me the SMC modem that I know, from experience, works fine. But "retention" offered that to me--as I was walking away. Sorry, lads.
So, I was offering them $100 a month for 25/3 for three years, and they couldn't get it right. Four hours of my life wasted watching them try. I walked away and will never deal with Comcast Southeast again as long as I live. I'll tether before I return to Comcast--like a dog to its vomit, as the old testament has it.
That said: it's a completely different ball game in the Northeast. I never had a single problem with Comcast in Vermont. Go figure.
No one really knows but it's between $750 and $1200 per box.
I call BS on this.
If Apple can sell a 64GB Apple TV 4K for $199 and make a nice profit on it, there's no way it costs Spectrum $750 - $1200 per box.
Ummm ... Actually..
The CableCard (tm) thingy runs about $500 retail and you need one of those in there to decode the cable video. So I'm guessing they are paying around $400 for the hardware in bulk and have to provide their own branded software on top of that. I'm *sure* they have a bunch of people who get paid license fees for the various off the shelf software components as well. Remember this thing does all sorts of things that the Apple TV doesn't try to but it does pretty much everything the AppleTV does. The QAM tuner decoding isn't on that AppleTV box, but the streaming part they share, then there is the encryption stuff that AppleTV doesn't do.
However, they pay way too much.
I use a network CableCard (tm) tuner that gets me 3 channels, then I use an old windows 7 box to run Media Center and Xbox 360's at each TV. I only get 1080p resolution, but for TV viewing that is plenty. I also get DVR ability with Media Center which is really nice. I will morn the passing of Windows 7 when it's finally cut lose by Microsoft and I will likely punt on Cable at that point anyway. My whole investment for 3 TV's is about $400, but it's been a couple of years since I purchased it all.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You have to add all the CableCard stuff to decrypt all those channels they chose to protect, license fees for the software and the customizations required for branding and marketing. So where the hardware may be as you say, the software and logistics of managing it all costs money too. Then there is the "free" install that you pay for too...
I suspect you may be a bit low on your cost estimate.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
2018:
Still needing a cable box for any reason whatsoever
ISHYGDDT.
Did you ever think about completing that advanced mathematical equation you gave and considering that your total internet cost? After much collaboration with leading mathematicians we were able to come to the conclusion that you are paying $29.95 a month for internet. Now here is where it gets strange. We found that whether you split the total cost into two lines or not the price stayed the same. To make it even more complicated we found that whether the variable modem was changed to internet with static IP the total cost remained the same. Perhaps someone here with a Nobel can chime in with some insight to this perplexing issue.
While these boxes are getting more and more expensive ( built in cable modems/wifi/moca/UI ie.. all licensed from other companies not actual hardware cost) the majority of the cost of the boxes are the fact that they have to replaced frequently. A not so small part of the people who have these boxes do not treat them with care, they put them in small enclosures with no airflow or they spill things on them or leave in locations where their animals can get to them. They are also often just lost outright when moving, some people will just throw them away when they cancel their service or put them up on ebay. Very few of these people actually pay for the box they damage or lost so that cost gets passed to someone else.
I do agree the so called "broadcast tv fee" is total junk fee and garbage. I know there are a few lawsuits on that fee I hope they win.
This is a good workaround to using rented devices.
My cable box was about somewhere between three and... maybe, I dunno, five bucks? I don't really remember what I paid for it, and I think originally I used it for something else before repurposing it into being my cable box.
I use it to store all my old, and many obsolete, cables, cords, and wires. Honestly, I'm not sure why I even keep them around, but I guess it's because I figure if I ever need one and I threw away a perfectly good one, I'd be pissed off at myself later. Most are screw-on coax cables, but some are push-to-fits, and the like. I also have a few coax splitters in there, because it's only natural to store them with the cables in the cable box... I might even have a terminator in there somewhere, and a 75 ohm to 300 ohm transformer or two.
That's what you guys were talking about, right?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Internet + Netflix + Mohu antenna for local channels over-the-air gives you all of the TV you can possibly watch. Who needs a "cable box?"
Over here (in Europe) my ISP provides a set-top-box (STB). They usually rent it for about 2EUR/month on top of the normal service fee providing that you sign up for 2 year contract. Long time ago it used to be that after 2 years, the device became the property of the subscriber (nowadays they just prolong the rental indefinitely). That sums to 24*2=48 EUR for STB. The other option is to buy it outright for price of about 100 EUR, but they really do not like talking about it and push towards the rental option. Considering the complexity and terrible responsiveness, I would say that a hardware at level of RPi would do a better job.
The ISP also rents a Huawei wifi router with optical converter for about 2 EUR/month. The particular device type is not available on local market except from this ISP. I prefer to own the hardware so after learning that I cannot buy it here, I contacted Huawei and asked for a quote. They offered $63 per device, 5 pieces minimum plus shipping. Which is reasonable IMHO. This was in year 2015.
So my guess is that we talk about 50-100 per device. Of course cheaper for a big ISP due economy of scale.
I avoid Comcast like the plague. Cut the cord years ago. Even back then there was a line of people returning equipment. Lucky for me I have an internet provider alternative. Comcast business model is based on raising prices without offering anything new. Their expertise is in inventing new fees or claiming taxes have doubled or even tripled month to month and calling customers cheap - "it's less than a $1, what's the big deal?". My cable bill always increased between $0.10 to $1.99 per month every month (using online bill pay provides great history information). You can call and threaten to cancel you can get it reduced but that is time consuming, annoying and doesn't last since the increases keep on coming anyways. They count on people being to lazy to find an alternative if they only see pennies increase each month (most people sadly don't put it together that over time it adds up). Whenever they come to try to sign me up again, I always ask whether they can give me any guarantees that my "fixed price plan" will not go up for the 2 years they are offering it to me, but their answer is always "the plan is fixed, but fees and taxes may change".
With 5G deployments coming soon, they will have even more customers fleeing as that that will give many customers an alternative for internet where Comcast was the only choice before.
If the Raspberry Pi is any standard to judge by, the price of ordinary motherboards does not increase, while their power and features increase substantially over time. If the cable company is losing customers, they should have a surplus of used cable boxes in their inventory. It doesn't make sense that their hardware costs are increasing.
In order to have a market-based approach, there first needs to be a market. In order for there to be a market, there first needs to be competition. Without competition, all you'll ever have is a "take it or leave it" transaction, with the seller in control of the price.
in canada you can buy the box without outlet fees
and in 2016+ they still had DCT2000 boxes in use. Yes the old boxes from around 2000 where still use in 2016.
should file an fcc complaint
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/t...)
For a lot of especially smaller publishers, the hardest part of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to comply with is article 27, which states that if you provide goods or services to the EU and you don't have a physical presence in the EU, you have to hire a firm with a physical presence in the EU to act as your representative. This representative service can run thousands of dollars per year for even the smallest sites (source) and smacks of protectionism. The only surefire way to avoid obligation under article 27 is not to provide goods or services to the EU.
I just canceled my account with DirectTv
I had a HD Tivo branded box, which about 5 years ago would have cost me about $300 (I can now buy one for $200). However, owning the device wouldn't stop their monthly tax of $15 ($10 for the DVR, $5 for Tivo service). On August 2nd they merged my account with AT&T's RC1 system and turned off the DVR and Tivo capabilities (all prior recorded content was also no longer watchable). After calling them about 7 times they told me their was nothing they could do and to stop calling.
So I did.
Instead I spent my time looking at streaming services, what we watched as a family, and what the costs were. I also ended up canceling my DSL with AT&T as well (they couldn't offer me speeds fast enough to stream tv).
My final solution was to go with Comcast for internet which is about $30 a month (40x faster than DSL for about 75% the cost). I bought a new modem for $75 shipped which supports downloads 10x faster than my current package (still way cheaper than paying their $11 rental fee on a modem). I already had a good wireless router and a 10GB switch which all worked with the modem.
I went with Sling for typical tv channels we watched at about $35 a month ($25 for the package, + $5 for kids channels, + $5 for DVR). I also bought a $90 Roku box (Roku 4, wired ethernet, 4K output, bluetooth remote).
So the breakdown of costs:
DirectTv + DSL ~ $132 per month.
Sling + Comcast ~ $65 per month (plus $165 one time equipment cost).
So in 2 1/2 months I will be in the black. I also now have way faster internet; and with streaming I can watch what I want when I want it. Roku also has a ton of old free shows and movies which I'm still binging on. I now no longer have any rental fee and I can cancel anytime I want with no penalty fees.
Still the best bit was calling DirectTv and canceling the whole thing. Then asking to be transfered to the DSL department so I could cancel that too.
How many college-educated immigrants from the United States is Canada willing to absorb over this issue?
Then at least I can take comfort in the fact that someone is screwing over the cable companies as much as they screw consumer.
Dunno, but a few of my colleagues from the US have moved from California to Vancouver in the past year. Better get a move on, while the getting is good.
I have Comcast for internet (no other choice here in the sticks). Rather than worry about a fixed IP you might try a dynamic DNS service.
Used DynDNS for years, newest router had a built-in updater and a âoegood for one free addressâ to No-IP.
VPN and other âoephone homeâ services work great resolving the subdomain.
Even did a SMTP server for a while... GoDaddy had (might still have) a way to set your domain to point to a dynamic subdomain, set your A and MX records and ran like a charm.
It should cost less than 39.99, which is the cost of a mid-low end Roku device.
Cable boxes allow you to watch stale, static, commercial laden content, on a device controlled by someone else, owned by someone else, monitored by someone else, at a time chosen by someone else.
the UI is terrible, the controls slow, no voice search, no quick access buttons, and a clunky remote with terrible battery life.
The cable box can report on what you watch, when you watch it, but unlike Roku, the analytics can not be blocked.
You also need a clunky cable box for every tv, with a clunky remote, with a shitty UI.
Also, the large, power-hungry cable box, is tied to that location, unlike a small portable roku.
Cable Box: 21W idle
Roku: ~1.2W idle, 5W max
so, if you love big clunky boxes, hate the environment, and love watching stale static, commerical laden conent, and paying for a power hungry, clunky , shitty box, boy, have I got a deal for you!
so that every ISP exists in a quantum state of crapiness that can be described as "Craptacular" or "Comcastic".
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How much do cable boxes actually cost? Why do their monthly fees keep going up when the cost of similar technology, such as TVs and computers, goes down over time? Not surprisingly, my attempts to answer these questions were met with stonewalling from industry players. Spectrum... clammed up real fast when I asked how much they pay for the boxes they lease to subscribers.
Also think about this: the cost of computing devices (and clothing, and food) has been consuming a smaller and smaller fraction of the average family's income as the years go by.
But the one expenditure that bucks this trend is the cost of government. It has consumed a larger and larger fraction of the average family's income.
Since government uses technology to provide services, one would think falling IT costs would in turn reduce the cost of government.
Advocates of big government clam up real fast when I ask about this.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Although CEO pay is certainly astronomical, there used to be public policy after the AT&T breakup to encourage customer premises equipment (CPE). Your own landline phone. The cable or set top box was an exception to owning your own stuff until sufficient commotion was made to let people have their own stuff.
If you have cable, you can very likely get your own stuff. Your local big box electronics retailer knows which one works with which provider in your area. It's fine to rob that provider of their insane rental monthly charges for cheapo routers, which is the point of the post.
And yes, they will nickel and dime their clientele because it beefs up the bottom line and pleases Wall Street and stockholders. This is not about consumers anymore, this is about a bought-off FCC and elected government in the USA. Ask questions, then: Vote.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Spectrum doesn't charge residential customers anything for the modem, is that not the case with business? It seems a silly thing to argue about having to use their modem when its free.
You don't go TO something FROM something. You go FROM something TO something. I don't know which fucking imbecile started this bullshit, but stop writing backwards.
the 7.3% higher box charge in November -- more than three times the inflation rate -- represents a "modest increase" that is "comparable or even lower than our major competitors."
My Netflix "cable box" came built-in to my TV, and my Blu-ray player. And my computer. And my phone. I did buy a $59 (or $5/mo for a year) Roku for the TV that doesn't have it built-in.
It's the cost of cable that drove me away in the first place -- at one point I was paying over $100 for basic cable, 2 cable boxes, plus a couple premium channels. Now I pay $9.99/mo for Netflix and receive free over-the-air TV with an antenna. Still haven't gotten away form the cable company though, now they get $59/month from me for internet.
. No customer-owned modems allowed for business accounts at all. They claim it's to "maintain the quality of their business network"
I've got Comcast Business, with a force-rented modem. I understand that it's actually for support -- if you call with a problem as a business customer, you want it fixed. And they don't want to futz with yet ANOTHER modem, and what's it's password, and what do you mean you don't know?
/24 network. Not that it bothered him at all, but apparently no one else bothers to do so.
Besides, if you're a "business customer" then that's just another ongoing cost of doing business, no big. This way they know *everything* up past the demarc to your edge of the network and they know EXACTLY what to expect once they get there.
They also give you (most of) the controls for it as well, so you can make reasonable changes. One of the techs was surprised that I had changed from their default
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I call BS. I am quite sure that Comcast's accounting department knows exactly what a set top box costs. Additionally, I think your guess (and that seems to be all it is, since you admit you do not know) is way too high.
I can see why you posted anonymously, boy would I love to have you as a customer! If yet really think it is between $750 and $1200 per box then I could make somewhere in the region $700 and $1180 profit on each one I sold you!
I worked once directly with an SOC supplier that makes set top box solutions. We only needed 7,000 systems making us a tier 5 customer, their lowest rank. I asked what a tier 1 supplier was, apparently anyone who orders in 1,000,000 up quantities. When I asked who could possibly be placing orders that size I was told set top boxes for cable companies. Based on my experience manufacturing similar stuff I would put the current cost of a cable set top box in the range $20 to $50 depending on the features offered.
So I'm guessing they are paying around $400 for the hardware in bulk
Let's go with that for a second or two.... Please explain why the rental price is constantly increasing? The cost of computing hardware is dropping each year. Why doesn't the set top box (which is, effectively, a computer) rental fee drop as well? OK, let me ask that a different way --- if the rental fee of a set top box rises over the years, what is the basis for that rise? What part or aspect of a set top box costs more for the cable company to purchase as time progresses?
It used to be that I would get an annual visit from a cable company representative to try to have me switch from my FIOS. Finally, last month, I cancelled my FIOS television after the latest price increase and got Amazon Prime. Just after that, a FIOS team rang my doorbell trying to entice me to sign-up again for television. I told them that their boxes and fees were too expensive, and why would I pay for something that still has (many, many) commercials. They then tried to have me sign-up for a higher Internet speed that I knew I didn't need. Abuse your customers too much, and take the consequences.
It'd be like AOL saying you can't use any HAYES compatible on their dial up.
It wasn't until 1968 that AT&T allowed you to use any modem/phone/device but theirs on the telephone network.
You are deluded. Cellular providers severely limit data usage because its a shared medium with limited bandwidth available at any moment. If they didn't you'd end up with like less than 1Mbps speed to ensure the network didn't become over saturated. It's why people quote "unlimited" when talking about cellular and the fine print exists.
Actually, they know all the client devices connected as well.
I was experiencing an outage a few weeks ago. My systems are really stable, so I assumed it was Comcast's fault. I rebooted their router/modem, that didn't fix it. I called in and had them reset it remotely through the automatic system. No joy.
Called back and spoke with someone who could actually help. For once I wasn't an asshole and asked for help nicely. Learned long ago that about 10% of the time, I'm wrong, so best to be nice. She connected to their modem/router in my business and started listing the connected devices. I have "guest" devices connected on their 10.x.x.x subnet but have the static IPs passed into my router via bridge mode so I don't need to trust their security settings. Anyway, she didn't list my router so I knew that was the issue and bounced it. It had been patched a few days earlier. That was 3+ weeks ago and the router has been solid since then and patched 2 more times.
With just 1 static IP, I think you can talk your way into using your own router/modem on a Biz account. People do. With multiple static IPs, the router uses BGP and could accidentally take over all the IPs for youtube, just like Pakistan did a few years ago. Best to let Comcast's automation handle all that. I'm not happy with the $11.95/month rental fee, but it is what it is.
Comcast allows you a modem. In Charter territory, the forced modem is a modem/router. This is where the problem comes in, honestly.
Their residential modems are junk. I have residential service and bought my own modem to avoid the dropouts I was getting with theirs.
Canada has more or less Medicare, but for everyone.
Nothing much to add other than market competition works. I have three broadband/cable providers available and pay only $35/month for 100/30 Mbs service. Antenna in Tampa Bay gets most of what I want and Google Voice on a VOIP device works fine and eliminates phone costs.
I have Tivos for PVR - its an investment and yes, you can build your own, but I have a seven year old box that still receives software and content updates (via their permanent subscription per device plan) and still works fine despite running 24/7 in a cabinet. I bought a second OTA box that does not require a paid subscription for guide updates. +Netflix and Prime Video (which I would buy anyway for Prime) and there's more TV to watch than I have time for. If you can negotiate decent Internet service PS Vue is a good option - had it for a few months but cancelled. Still, Internet plus Vue was around $80/month, which half what I was paying Frontier/Verizon/Fios.
at least charter reassigns the same ip address to residential customers over long periods of time (months, or years, even) provided the equipment that is getting the ip (charter-owned modem or modem/router combo or customer-provided router attached to a plain modem) doesn't change.
AND, at least there's no monthly fee for using a charter-provided modem. granted, they've built that into the price of the service and then don't discount if you use your own hardware (on residential accounts). for business accounts. use their modem, bridge that to your own router if you want your own instead of theirs.
you dont need a static ip anyways. just setup a name server. when you ip changes the server will see that and point to the new ip.
You forget about the huge up front investment infrastructure. Want to look at the face of greed. Just look at Government run institutions where far more of your money gets spent on terrible service. In nyc we have mta which new yorkers pay 10 separate taxes on top of the fare and they mis spend the money. Do they overcharge for the cable box . YES. Is the overall product better and cheaper than if it was run by no nothing political hacks. YES
A Comcast cable box runs between 50 and $200, depending on whether it has a hard drive
The typical box costs a cable provider very little, sometimes $40 for a DTA, or $100 something for your standard box..
It is paid off in less than 2 years and it's depreciated along a 3 yr schedule. It's free, and it's pure profit after 18 months.
Now there are costs to run the systems, rma stuff, send a technician to swap it, even bug exterminations.. I recommend the freezing method myself. Even the software license to run it costs a nominal amount.. and to Comcast and Motorola's credit, there is an r&d effort. I really like my X1
Does it cost $9 a month? No, it's immensely profitable.
I'm OP anon from before. The person above is correct. The prices are heavily inflated. I will explain why. I worked at corporate in Philly and while yes I didn't know any hardware folks my team did take boxes apart and do user testing.
First of all it's not one box. There's constant version changes. There are a few dozen SKUs in the system from dozens of manufacturers. Over the years there are many variations of boxes in the wild. R&D keeps fucking with them continuously. Job security masked as "improvement".
Details right? Okay.
They run linux. They are full computers. The generation before the current one includes a 5400 RPM HDD for recording functionality. They run a NodeJS powered JavaScript application to render the front end and generally speaking that things is slow as fuck and has to be compatible with all the dozens of SKUs so it's a memory leaking piece of shit written by below average engineers in center city Philadelphia. The thing leaks memory so badly that all the boxes are sent a restart signal once a day to avoid total lockups of the machines. They all send plain text logs to Splunk all day every day apache2 style. There are literally millions of error codes that get thrown daily by the boxes. Part of my job was to literally parse this crap from Splunk and spit out charts that would get put into Slack for execs to regurgitate in their fucking reports. Engineering can SSH into boxes at will.
The boxes have lower memory and have shit CPU except with dedicated real-time processing video chips for the actual video. And by real time I just mean the tuner to the output as well as the 'overlay' would render kinda fast with a decent on-board video processor for that kind of stuff. The rest is yes very low end crap. But remember the buy orders on these things are in the tens of thousands at a time. Unless someone is a new customer or we have a tech come out we will not try to upgrade someone's box. That can cause all sorts of problems for none technical people and technical people alike.
The new 4K boxes are much smaller. They don't have hard drives and are designed to play your DVR recordings from the cloud. Which itself is a giant R&D mess. Oh and we're not even talking about the Cable Modems which is a whole other device. Also around $500-$600 for those. When I left they were testing switching to AWS for some VoIP stuff. Testing showed a 3x performance improvement from AWS servers compared to in-house devops. Not surprised lmao.
There's also tons and tons of waste. The Comcast buildings in Philly have data centers in them. There's brand new boxes and servers from 10 years ago sitting in boxes unopened. Don't worry they will just increase your bill to pay for it all! Like I said. Fuck that place. I have FiOS at home.
the broadcast TV surcharge will rise to $9.95 from $8.85 a month
This the single dumbest thing, and is proof positive that the industry 'regulators' do no such thing. Having a 'broadcast TV surcharge' for cable... who's entire purpose is to broadcast TV over their cables... is like having a 'flour surcharge' at a cake store. It's just another way for cable companies to advertise $29.99/mo... but it's only for 12 months... plus fees... plus taxes... plus surcharges... plus cable box rental. So after the 12th month, it's actually double or maybe triple the cost they advertise.
Add up the retail cost of the components. The real cost will be 1% of this.
Let's look at this logically, though. Designing the board costs a lot more than etching it. You don't need gigabytes of RAM. You don't need expansion slots. These are the expensive components in a computer and they're all missing.
Even if we assume embedded costs $300 retail and 50% markup per layer of sales, you're looking at $75 for a set-top box.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm gonna call be on that, especially the "they charge you less for not bringing it back" part
Because they'll happily charge you $300 for not bringing back a $120 cable modem
Lower income and lower educated would have more trouble paying up front and would have a harder time determining their options.
Personally, I'm on spectrum at the moment and the web interface on my computer and then casting if I want it works way way way better than their terrible box.
my cable box is near the size of an old school VCR, why on earth is it so big? and it's not all empty space either because it's fairly heavy relative to its size. It certainly doesn't have any more processing power than my Raspberry Pi media player and even you take that and add a honking big hard drive it still should be like 1/3 the size it is or less.
The CableCard (tm) thingy runs about $500 retail and you need one of those in there to decode the cable video.
Right there. That's the problem. There is no need for this. Charge $50 for all the channels and let me use my TVs built in tuner.
Yes - this is one thing I give them points for. And it makes Asterisk happy. Every time my IP would change, my SIP provider would reject me as a duplicate registration. But Charter is using junk for modems. I had a terrible Technicolor modem that I bought a faster modem with more channels to replace. It actually had more downstream channels available than what Charter modems did, but oddly Charter does provision those extra channels. So I have some lanes on the highway practically to myself.
Comcast has an app in beta for Roku, with the disclaimer that when the app finishes beta testing, they will charge customers for its use as if it is another connected TV at the rate for an HD cable box.
If I'm supplying the hardware, and all it cost is the one-time software development cost, and I'm paying for the service, why should I have to pay a fee to use the service?
Oh, to add insult to injury, you MUST have a Comcast HD TV box on your account before you can use the Roku app. So to use their app, which is far, far better than their crappy box, you have to pay for the box and the app.
i've been out of it for a while now but .... ... ... their north-american availability is too recent but it stands to reason that standardisation would drive prices towards china boxes.
china boxes (clear-qam or standard encryption) run $30-$80, add $50 for a hard-disk for DVR
where it hurts is the encryption licences which vendor-lock MSOs
basic clones (like pace) with encryption supports are a bit more expensive but reasonable... $60-120
Cisco/SciAtl boxes used to run between $150 - $1200, but im guessing big mso , with volume, pay in the range of $80 for cheap boxes and $350 for multi-room DVR with 8 tuners
Same price-range for motorola/arris based encyrption boxes.
Tivo used to charged a $/month to MSO on top of the hardware for the software premium
i don't know about cablecards
all in all, MSO have a payback on the industry average rental of $7 in about 8-15 months.
I've been in the set-top box business for more than 25yrs and can tell you, they are ripping you off way more than you know. The cost of at pay-TV box, similar to a DirectTV or cable box, is roughly $12 FOB China. The cost of a free to air ATSC or DVB-T box is roughly $7.50.
Windows 7 won't spontaneously combust after 2020, and if the guide shits the bed, there are instructions out there to convert WMC to SchedulesDirect.
WMC will continue long into the future I'm thinking ....
When I attempted sign-up, YouTube region blocked me based on my Google Account's billing address:
Is it cost-effective for prospective customers interested in YouTube TV to first move to one of the supported cities?
Only the one person who pays the bill to the supplier.
Everyone else is in the dark.
Corporate culture.
Apparently they changed their policy. No static IP if the customer is using their own modem. Nope, we can't have our old IP back, big FU. We have to pay $19.95@mo + $10 modem lease to get a static from them now. Never mind that this is a bonafide business account.
The reason you need to use a Comcast provided modem for a static IP on Comcast business is because they are routing the static IP's via RIP. The modem they provide for business class customers includes a router with RIP functionality.
The only other hardware I can think of that stayed at the same price point for so long without any value-adding hardware or software changes are TI graphing calculators.
That's what monopoly power does to a market.
What does it matter? They can charge whatever they want and whatever you will pay? You don't NEED a cable box, you want a cable box. How bad do you want it?
Everyone can get free HDTV over the air.
I would say how much are we paying you vs how much you are Worth?
Yep, the weak link will be the display driving of your extra TV's, for which I use Xbox 360's. These things are cheap and still readily available on E-Bay, so as they die on me, I just replace them. This limits your resolution to 1080p, but I only have one TV that displays anything more.
I didn't know about converting WMC to another scheduling source.. I'll have to look into that. Thanks!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Although CEO pay is certainly astronomical
$4 per employee per year for the Walmart CEO. $18.90 per employee-year for Comcast's. Those are for cash; stock compensation is bigger.
Cash comes out of revenue. Stock awards are essentially printing money: you have a currency called WMT or CMCSA, you print more, you give the freshly-minted currency to your CEO. You can see why stock awards are cheap and why you can't compensate everyone with just lots and lots of stock.
So you can think of a CEO as making something like a penny an hour per employee, or ten cents (at $200 per employee-year), or so.
Comcast has something like an 11% net operating profit usually, and it's up around 13% now IIRC. I generally consider 8% the fair-and-reasonable-profit line, with Walmart outperforming at 3% and Apple sucking an unbelievable 20%+ out of their customers. I have actually proposed that companies like Walmart should be paying about 16% CIT while companies like Apple should be paying around 48%, based on a sigmoid calculated from net operating profit margins.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Charter (Spectrum) is worse. No static IP without a business account. No customer-owned modems allowed for business accounts at all.
I was thinking about getting a business account with Spectrum. This is a HUGE deal breaker for me.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I won't go into the multitude of reasons why I hate spectrum, though my hate is well justified.
I love my WOW service. They were upfront about their modem rental and freely told me I could provide my own and waive the rental fee. $7 a month to rent a modem. I picked up an identical one on ebay for $10, which saves me $84/yr on my bill. Eventually, I bought a new $60 model because I needed DOCSIS 3.0. Still, a good investment in my opinion.
Sorry. I'm not going to vote Democrat until after I die.
Have gnu, will travel.
Cable companies are worse than lawyers and politicians, and that's a pretty low bar as is.
I wasn't even aware there was a bar so far as these are concerned.
I have FiOS as well, and I'm not sure they are better. Their DVRs are pathetic, although I haven't tried the new ones. They charge $24/mo for a basic DVR. That's highway robbery. $5/mo for my old router that was advertised as "free" when I got it. No thanks. I had to return it, too, or they'd charge me for my "free router." I had a free for life DVR, too, but that ended. Apparently "for life" means "until we get tired of it."
They charge $5/mo for CableCards and set the copy once bit on many channels so you can't use anything other than TiVo for recording many channels. I'd leave them, but Comcast only offers "up to" 10 mbps upload speed on their internet, which is useless for my needs (vs 50 for FiOS.)
Their web site is super slow and ends up with "internal server error" messages all the time. I'm amazed they are still around. They clearly aren't investing in their service.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Every STB that is on an account has a license fee attached to it. The manufacturers can do this because digital video is a swamp of patents every bit as horrible as the cellular industry.
Bernie Sanders promoted Scandinavian Social Democracy also. That's madness.
Norway has higher before-tax per-capita GDP than the U.S., but only because it -- like Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait and UAE -- exports massive amounts of fossil fuels. (I haven't seen any rankings of after-tax per-capita GDP, but Norway would have a much poorer showing in such a ranking. You can ignore Ireland's high ranking in this list, which is purely an artifact of being a tax haven for multinational corporations.)
The other Scandinavian countries have significantly lower before-tax per-capita GDP than the U.S -- despite the advantage of their socio-ethnic homogeneity, and despite our disadvantage of still being a net oil and gas importer (despite what you may have heard).
Therefore there's absolutely no reason the U.S. should want to emulate the Scandinavian Social Democracy model.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.