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| | Get off the MSO's want to collect rental fee crap! All of you who think cable companies don't push cablecards because they want to collect "rent" are clueless. A DVR box costs the cable company $400 up front. The rental fee is so they can recoup the cost. If they charge you $15 a month it takes 26+ months to break even on the cost. Cable cards cost $50 each. So they can obviously lower the "rental rates" accordingly. Soon all you will be able to buy your own settop at retail environments. But when they break or have issues, good luck getting samsung, pioneer and the likes to replace it or send someone to your house. | |
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 ·Mediacom
| Re: Get off the MSO's want to collect rental fee crap! said by magnushsi:All of you who think cable companies don't push cablecards because they want to collect "rent" are clueless. A DVR box costs the cable company $400 up front. The rental fee is so they can recoup the cost. If they charge you $15 a month it takes 26+ months to break even on the cost. Cable cards cost $50 each. So they can obviously lower the "rental rates" accordingly. Soon all you will be able to buy your own settop at retail environments. But when they break or have issues, good luck getting samsung, pioneer and the likes to replace it or send someone to your house. Sorry to bust your corporate bubble, but the cable monopolies don't pay anywhere near $400 for their STBs.
That might be what YOU get charged if the equipment disappears, of course, but they don't pay anywhere near that.
I'll repeat it again: The reason for CableCARD's dismal performance is profits for cable. Nothing more, nothing less. They wouldn't even offer them if it weren't mandated. Why do you think they lobbied so hard to stop consumers from purchasing their own equipment? All those box rentals add up to big profits.
And for those who ask "Why get a CableCARD with your $2000 TV?" ... Well, duh, not everyone wants ANOTHER set top box sitting around. | |
| | | | Re: Get off the MSO's want to collect rental fee crap! I will have to strongly disagree. I know 100% for a fact what cable companies pay for boxes. Trust me, I have a little (a lot) of inside information in this arena. And they do pay nearly $400 for DVR boxes.
The only reason they don't push S-Cards are due to the 1-way services associated with the host devices. Cable companies love the thought of no settops to deal with as long as they can make revenue off two-way services, VOD, etc. Note the huge $ Cable Vision is trying to spend to get rid of DVRs completely and put all the recorded content in thier headend. »Cablevision Mulling Appeal In Network DVR Case Why? To save dealing with boxes. Cable companies loose huge $ on managing, provisioning, support settops. | |
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| | said by magnushsi:The rental fee is so they can recoup the cost. If they charge you $15 a month it takes 26+ months to break even on the cost. Your forgetting that the STB's are capital equipment and they can be depreciated and written off on the MSO's taxes. | |
| | Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: Get off the MSO's want to collect rental fee crap! I have had a cable card installed, the first time the card didnt work and the idiots just left it in my TV and charged me for it, I had them come again and they tried 2 different cards and neither worked. This was about 2 months ago and I had my dad talk to the people because I wasnt home when Time Warner came to install the card. This saturday they are coming again and I'm going to MAKE SURE IT WORKS. No wonder most people dont have cable cards, most of them dont work to begin with, my tv has a built in HD DVD so the card better work. | |
| | | | Lets all not forget that as of July of 2007 all new set top boxes in the US are required to have "separate security" and will thus have cable cards inside of the set top boxes. This goes for cable and telco's. Its cumbersome, more expensive, and so another reason no one likes cable cards is because a much better alternative, DCAS is just up around the corner. It will be much better when you'll be able to buy your own set top box, hook it up to the cable, and it will download the security to the box.
BTW cable co's really would like not having to rent boxes. Not only do you have to build warehouses to store them, but you have to hire people to install them, stage them, upgrade them, and spend more money to repair them. It's the STB manufactures that are dreading the day that they have 3rd party competiion in an open standards market and worried STB's will do what cable modems did; drop to bargin basement prices, with razor slim margins. The FCC pushed separate security (whatever form it takes) but it's the cable co's who are driving OCAP to help drive more CPE and applications competion to help drive down everyones costs. | |
| | | | | Re: Get off the MSO's want to collect rental fee crap! Exactly, you might want to look at this:
»www.samsung.com/PressCenter/Pres···00224667
Samsung showed this TV in their 2007 CES booth and claimed it would go on sale in the U.S later this year. | |
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