 MoracCat god
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
kudos:1
 ·Comcast
| reply to Mr Matt
Re: Nasty said by Mr Matt:The FCC should use the telephone company model forcing the cable and DBS industry to allow the customer to own their own equipment.
The FCC does force cable providers to allow users to install and use their own equipment by mandating that cable companies support CableCARDs which separates encryption from the device.
The FCC even mandates what can be charged for cards and that cable companies should refund customers the cost they would have paid renting from the cable company. In other words deduct the rental fee.
What Comcast did was arbitrarily decide that the box rental fee should now be $2.50 instead of the previous $10, so that's what customers who use their own equipment get back. Of course the box rental fee can't actually be $2.50 so they then tacked on a $7.50 outlet fee to make up the difference. Since it's not a "rental" fee, customers using their own equipment still have to pay it. It follows the letter of the FCC regulations, but not the spirit of said regulations. Basically Comcast found a loophole.
Don't expect the FCC to revisit this any time soon though as it's been neutered recently.
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The Comcast Disney Avatar has been retired. |
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 hambone42Peace, through superior firepowerPremium
join:2002-02-02
Manassas, VA | reply to Zoder
said by Zoder:(snip)
Oh no customer, we're only charging you $2.50 for the equipment. It doesn't matter if it's an SD, HD or DVR box. The equipment is just $2.50. It's the "outlet" that you are paying $7+ for.
Yet here we see the outlet charge is only $1.49. It's the same outlet and if you have digital starter, the same channels.
(snip)
That's the part that frosts me the most. I'm moving into a new house and am paying for all of the interior TV and network cabling. Except for the extremely small marginal cost of the extra power to boost the signal entering my home, my additional outlets cost Comcast nothing from an infrastructure perspective. I doubt they cost Comcast anything from a licensing perspective, either.
This reminds me -- they still haven't fixed my billing to credit me for their box that I turned in and replaced with a TiVO two months ago. If they start charging me for the DTA's that were supposed to be free, I'll be turning those in and going OTA for those TV's.
When does Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" start up again? 
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Sarcasm is the Body's Natural Defense Against Stupidity |
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Reviews:
 ·Millenicom
 ·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| reply to amungus
Re: suck The television manufacturers got hurt financially from the CableCard debacles. Advanced services were not available if you used the CableCard, only set top boxes from the cable companies provided those services. Tru2Way cards were supposed to be capable of allowing all the advanced services, but without out the need for a box. Few cable companies use them, there is almost no equipment available that has the Tru2Way card slot. The FCC has done little to regulate the cable industry to eliminate the need to use proprietary set top DVRs or other boxes. In theory you would be able to subscribe with a cable company for services and get the number of Tru2Way cards you need, You then go out and buy whatever DVRs or TVs you want that had Thu2Way slots. You would then connect the card to the wall outlet and then to the DVR you bought. The card would have all the security stuff a box does, but in a much smaller format.
It confounds me that the cable industry does not want to get rid of the logistical hassle of set top boxes and switch to a CableCard or Tru2Way only system. Letting the customer deal with the DVR would seem to be an easier business model. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to alexintexas
Re: Nasty In what world would a DVR cost $1200 in a healthy retail market? You're talking about a QAM tuner, processors, and hard drive. Not exactly state of the art technology. It would quickly become a commodity item. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to davidhoffman
Re: suck said by davidhoffman:It confounds me that the cable industry does not want to get rid of the logistical hassle of set top boxes and switch to a CableCard or Tru2Way only system. Letting the customer deal with the DVR would seem to be an easier business model.
There's too much profit in the current system. These DTAs are going to bring in 500 million a year just by themselves. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to Wolf
Re: Big deal The infrastructure was already in place when Comcast built out their digital cable plant years earlier. The purpose of the digital migration was to reclaim the bandwidth used by the analog channels and use the much more efficient digital channels in their place. They needed this extra bandwidth for increasing HSI speeds and expanding VOD options. Their other option was to upgrade every plant with additional bandwidth capacity. It's estimated that buying the DTA's saved Comcast 90% over what upgrading the plant would have cost them |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to PeteC2
Does your apartment complex have a contract with Comcast for service? That could explain the difference.
These DTAs were discussed frequently when the digital migrations were taking place and never was it brought up in discussions that the first two boxes would be charged for after 2 years. I don't have my letter any more from years ago but y definitely would have brought it up at the time if it had mentioned a charge 2 years out. |
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BiggA
join:2005-11-23
EARTH Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to Zoder
Re: Nasty The incentive to own your own MCE PC is pretty big when you can scale it out to 6 simultaneous users and 12 tuners for the price of two additional cable cards. That's way cheaper than crappy Comcast boxes, and most people would only need 4 or 8 tuners.
Also, these things are useless in the first place, as TV without a DVR... what's the point?
As for extra sets... just use MCE for the whole house, and throw a used XBOX with any extra TVs.
Also, there is no big scam to stop people from using CableCards... very, very few people do. They are pretty nice about them, and helpful when getting a self-install CableCard, at least IMO. And, they support ONDemand on TiVos on Moto systems, because then they make a crapton of money off of rentals. They would support it on SA systems if they could figure out how to accept IP input to the VOD system.
They did get rid of the remote control fee... that one was especially egregious, as you couldn't return the remote and not pay the fee, even if you had your own universal remote control.
DVRs don't cost $1200. That's absurd. Even a TiVo with Lifetime, which is a far more capable machine than an RNG200M or DCX3400M, which are Comcast's top Cisco and Moto boxes, respectively, costs less than $1k with a Lifetime subscription.
The "outlet" fees are just disguised box fees, one way or another. It has nothing to do with physical outlets. Heck, with MCE7 you could be running 6 TVs off of one or two "outlets". But they do have the analog cable thing back under control from when people were hooking up a ton of TVs to one subscription and not getting any more revenue for Comcast. |
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Reviews:
·Millenicom
·AT&T Southeast
·Verizon Wireless..
| reply to Zoder
Re: suck The DTAs are relatively small form factor solid state devices with comparatively simple firmware. DVRs are hulking power hungry machines with multiple rotating mechanical disks and complex firmware. I can see why you would want to keep the small simple low logistical cost DTAs as a profit center, but if I were a cable CEO I would want to get rid of those DVRs and switch to CableCard and Tru2Way. |
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Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| reply to Zoder
Re: Nasty actually it wouldnt think about it,,,,also best buy and others need to make $$$ so yes that would be the cost per device believe it or not its reality..cable co's buy DIRECT from a manufacturer and in HUGE BULK not one by one nor do they deal with retailers
you obviously have no clue on manufacturing and costs involved in it..it entails huge amounts of $$$$ in R&D before anything is even manufactured once they do get a baseline they pay another large amount of $$$$ to build and test it,,,and they find problems thus more R&D and modifications which cost more money
the PS3 is an example look what the system cost the first 5+ years Sony "lost" money on every single unit sold and gambled on the hopes that they could make it up in accessory sales. i might add the ps3 was not cheap. Sony is not the only ones look at the "iphone" $450 bucks starting. my HTC sensation cost me $525, once a manufacturer recovers its costs in initial R&D etc they might lower the price however......
now an STB manufacturer is not going to lose money on this venture and then retailers need their cut as well, so we would be lucky to see no more then 3 total manufacturers building them |
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Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| reply to BiggA
building an MCE PC is an excellent idea but in the tuners in your configuration is $1200 alone. to run those cards you need a top of the line pc thats another $1200 not to mention a pc or xbox at each tv as i have stated its an excellent idea but initial upfront cost is just well alot for your avg consumer
tivo???? LOL yes $400 for the box then pay $15. a month to be able to use it monthly or $400 for lifetime use thats min $800 or pay termination fees on the monthly, or pay more money for the boxes upfront and pay $20 a month to utilize it to avoid termination charges. and guess what if the cable co goes to ip based, your tivo is FUCKED!!!!! and useless |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to alexintexas
The PS3 used a state of the art processor that Sony spend years developing.
I look at it like this. You have two main players in the STB market. Both refuse to sell their products at retail. They sell to the cable companies wholesale and set whatever price they want. That is not a real market price, it's a duopoly market price. The cable companies than pass this along to their customers in high monthly fees. The testing you are referring to is because they want a standard platform for their market so they have the manufacturer make custom changes that need to be tested extensively before it can be rolled out to millions of customers. If there was an open standard, not a locked down standard controlled by CableLabs, you could hook whatever device you wanted to the cable and innovation and competition would thrive.
What exactly is this highly innovative technology in a DVR that huge amounts of R&D is being spent on? It was innovative when TIVO developed it over a decade ago. What's changed? A faster processor, a bigger harddrive, and in some cases more tuners. We're not talking about an iphone which is constantly refreshed with new technology every year.
So yes, under the byzantine system Moto, Cisco, and the cable industry currently have in place, a retail box probably would end up being over priced. But it would be due to manipulating the market and not the reality of the technology in a DVR.
Now ideally, something like Allvid would become a standard. All incoming signals whether they be cable, telco, or satellite would be converted at the entry into the home into IP which any device in your home could understand. Then you could hook up a tv, stb, tablet, smartphone, dvr, computer, etc... driving down costs and letting the customer own their own video equipment. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL
1 edit | reply to BiggA
said by BiggA:The incentive to own your own MCE PC is pretty big when you can scale it out to 6 simultaneous users and 12 tuners for the price of two additional cable cards. That's way cheaper than crappy Comcast boxes, and most people would only need 4 or 8 tuners.
Also, these things are useless in the first place, as TV without a DVR... what's the point?
As for extra sets... just use MCE for the whole house, and throw a used XBOX with any extra TVs.
Also, there is no big scam to stop people from using CableCards... very, very few people do. They are pretty nice about them, and helpful when getting a self-install CableCard, at least IMO. And, they support ONDemand on TiVos on Moto systems, because then they make a crapton of money off of rentals. They would support it on SA systems if they could figure out how to accept IP input to the VOD system.
They did get rid of the remote control fee... that one was especially egregious, as you couldn't return the remote and not pay the fee, even if you had your own universal remote control.
DVRs don't cost $1200. That's absurd. Even a TiVo with Lifetime, which is a far more capable machine than an RNG200M or DCX3400M, which are Comcast's top Cisco and Moto boxes, respectively, costs less than $1k with a Lifetime subscription.
The "outlet" fees are just disguised box fees, one way or another. It has nothing to do with physical outlets. Heck, with MCE7 you could be running 6 TVs off of one or two "outlets". But they do have the analog cable thing back under control from when people were hooking up a ton of TVs to one subscription and not getting any more revenue for Comcast.
That's something someone who frequents dslreports would do. I'm talking about the average American cable customer.
The point I'm trying to make is that they make more money when you rent their box. The FCC has tried to encourage COE by forcing the cable companies to issue a credit for the STB rental price. Comcast has found a loophole by making most of the STB rental price consist of this "digital outlet" fee so they could issue as little a credit as possible. The DTA price breakout exposes that.
There was a reason Comcast would not charge you per outlet for cableready tvs. It was outlawed in the early 90s. The move to digital has allowed them to resurrect a decades old fee. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | reply to alexintexas
said by alexintexas:building an MCE PC is an excellent idea but in the tuners in your configuration is $1200 alone. to run those cards you need a top of the line pc thats another $1200 not to mention a pc or xbox at each tv as i have stated its an excellent idea but initial upfront cost is just well alot for your avg consumer
A 4 tuner ceton card costs $200 right now on Amazon. Which equipment are you looking at? |
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Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| said by Zoder:A 4 tuner ceton card costs $200 right now on Amazon. Which equipment are you looking at?
your correct but still $400 in upfront costs imagine what manufacturers would charge to build an MCE pc  and you still need a high end pc for this not to mention 4 cable lines and 4 cable cards. and again if the cable co moves to ip based those cards are useless this is the reason i have not done this |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL | Actually you don't need 4 cablecards per Ceton. Only 1 M-card.
Also one line. Same way Comcast's Dvr has 2 tuners but only one line. The card tunes in to multiple channels on the one line. |
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Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| reply to Zoder
your reply clearly shows you dont know the costs involved in manufacturing and or what it takes or costs to make it a reality. and its in ANY manufacturing not just "dvr's," phones etc. how much do you think Sony paid in R&D for the chip? and that is ONE part.
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STB makers make and do specification's to whatever cable company wants/needs is buying them not what the manufacturer puts out, thus cable pays most/all R&D cable co's dont want consumers owning them for many reasons 1. being theft of service.
actually cable cos could care less if they didnt fear the content providers, over skipping ads, copy protection etc etc etc so blame the wonderful content providers for no consumer end dvr's or STB's
how much did tivos cost when first released???? again not cheap and still not cheap. and still controlled by tivo due to the content providers
also in many markets today content providers are demanding the cable co to block 3rd party cable card recording, and in a couple of markets all channels are blocked. |
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 joetaxpayerI'M Here Till Thursday
join:2001-09-07
Sudbury, MA | Streaming / Networking is the answer. The $7.45 outlet fees can easily fund a home network over time. Whether it's TiVos, Slingboxes, etc, one 4 tuner DVR and a way to use it to view anywhere in the house. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL
1 edit | reply to alexintexas
Re: Nasty DVRs have been ruled legal by the courts. The FCC's official policy is that customers should be able to own STB's if they so choose. Content providers might not like them, but they couldn't stop them if they were sold directly to the public. Content providers cannot force cable cos to block 3rd party cable card recording if they allow 1st party recording. The whole point of the FCC's separable security mandate is that everything is treated equal regarding security whether it's cable owned or customer owned.
You brought up the PS3. I was trying to say that Sony did spend a huge amount of money developing the chip and that it was state of the art technology at the time it was released. You are trying to compare that to the technology inside a DVR which in 2013 is standard tech and not cuttting edge. Adding a faster processor following Moore's law and a bigger harddrive does not make it state of the art justifying a retail cost anywhere close to $1200. The bill of materials is likely a few hundred max.
Retail margins on consumer electronics is low which is why stores like best buy push the accessories and extended warranty when you buy CE items in the store. The markup on those items is high.
Regardigng the phones, I would say the market is a little distorted on that front. Since most phones are bought with subsidies the manufacturers are able to demand a higher price point from the carriers then woud otherwise be the case if the phones were all sold entirely at retail with no subsidy. Under those conditions it would be subject to supply and demand. If most people are willing to pay $600+ for a phone the prices would stay at that level. If not, the manufacturers would have to lower the price and their margins on the phones. Apple doesn't have huge profits each qtr because the markup is low. People want the iphone at the subsidized price in droves and Apple can then set the price the carriers have to pay very high. |
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Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·Clearwire Wireless
| said by Zoder:DVRs have been ruled legal by the courts. The FCC's official policy is that customers should be able to own STB's if they so choose. Content providers might not like them, but they couldn't stop them if they were sold directly to the public. Content providers cannot force cable cos to block 3rd party cable card recording if they allow 1st party recording. The whole point of the FCC's separable security mandate is that everything is treated equal regarding security whether it's cable owned or customer owned.
read around where tivos and pc tuners are sold, cable operators are blocking of recording channels at the demand of content provides. you keep citing 10+ year FCC laws that no longer apply to current tech. todays FCC is 2000% useless so stop citing it because 1 content provider has the money to fight any FCC ruling, and i dont care about 10 year old FCC laws, nor does cable co much less content providers,
CONTENT PROVIDERS dont want a consumer grade dvr to enable copying THEIR content to other mediums or devices and guess what that is a FCC law older then anyone law you been citing and a cable co or content provider would win in court over it period
said by Zoder:You brought up the PS3. I was trying to say that Sony did spend a huge amount of money developing the chip and that it was state of the art technology at the time it was released. You are trying to compare that to the technology inside a DVR which in 2013 is standard tech and not cuttting edge. Adding a faster processor following Moore's law and a bigger harddrive does not make it state of the art justifying a retail cost anywhere close to $1200. The bill of materials is likely a few hundred max
here we go beating this dead horse again
i said "initial" R&D the costs involved.....
i work and have worked in manufacturing for 10 years currently working in a company that makes soda dispensing machines. their top contractor, a top soda maker in the US decided they wanted a whole new machine,,they spent 2 years in R&D before anything was made, when it came time to start production the tools to make the plastic parts alone cost over $1 million, they also paid another million on a molding machine needed this is/was only a small part of expenditures. and in only one department.
this top soda maker said get the product out so they did, in lab testing found MANY problem's, they wanted it out in use so my employer did a 100 unit test bed in high volume stores, in the first 6 months over 1/2 the units failed in field and kept failing.
the soda maker in the end fired top level management, spent over $250 million yes you read that correct and scraped the whole project. and only 100 units + testing units where ever made out of this tiny venture this i might add happened in the early 90's
so at that kind of $$$ and no advertising or marketing costs got involved, how many years do you think it takes to recoup the initial costs?
auto manufactures is another fine example and why cars/trucks are not redesigned no less then 5 years and many every 10..
a VCR when it first came out in 1970 it cost $2100 bucks and even through out the mid 70's - 80 the costs where still about $800
what did DVD players cost the first 5 years? cd players?
once a product is produced now comes marketing cost, advertising cost, another small fortune tacked onto said product
also many retailers markup to 50% on certain items |
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