For the MOCA filter, they don't require a tech install it because you are not capable. They require it because many customers would simply install the equipment and disregard the filter because they don't understand that it is to prevent MOCA signals above 1GHz from traveling back into the plant. You have to view this from average customer knowledge rather than your knowledge. I have went to many houses where the owner did not know where the utilities enter the property, how can a company rely on those kind of customers to install a filter?

They would have to convert their few Sci Atlanta markets to Motorola, and in the process, would have to roll out dual-mode cable boxes, but I'd imagine anything new and Comcast-branded that they are getting custom built are dual-mode anyways.

These are things that cost a lot of money to upgrade. You may remember another cable company that tried to do mass upgrade to the later backend and line gear. That company was Charter and it landed them in bankruptcy. These upgrades you speak of all cost a lot of money and will not generate much new revenue it any. As to the support people, they will not have a clue anyway.

no i said cable companies are flagging x-channel at the request of x-content provider to disable recording on pc tuners and even tivos, not on cable co dvr, so say i have a centon or even a tivo say fox does not want my market to record to my dvr they send the flag request to the cable co. thus all cable cards (cable dvr's excluded) in my market would be blocked from recording fox.

You said you can't record copy protected content, which is factually wrong. You can, and you can stream it. You just can't copy it to another machine on the network.

I replaced the stock Intel cooler. It's probably overpowered for MCE, but I wanted a Core i-series processor.

@alexintexas: You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. My Core i3 machine has one cablecard, one cable line, 4 tuners, and it's putting over 90% of it's CPU power towards F@H even when I'm watching TV and playing with the DVR functionality.

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.

A 4 tuner ceton card costs $200 right now on Amazon. Which equipment are you looking at?

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

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.

(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)

The FCC should use the telephone company model forcing the cable and DBS industry to allow the customer to own their own equipment.

REGULATION is the answer.

The charging per receiver when you owned them was a scam to begin with.

It took $0 more dollars for them to deliver you signal to 1 TV or 10.

Just like the HD fee used and the fact that Dish charges $10 (at the time I was with them) just so you can have the component connection on the STB enabled.

Bottom line is that these people make up fees that have no relation to cost and they know we have to pay it because we dont have a much of a choice.

Up until last year I could receive up to around 70 channels without additional equipment on a cable ready television set.

I look at TV without a box / dta (analog channels) as maybe a little benefit they extended to customers but it is time to move on and free up the bandwidth for more services.

I am particularly irritated because I replaced two televisions in 2011 in guest bedrooms so visitors could watch TV without interfering with our viewing. At that time it was not necessary to use a STB to receive 70 extended basic channels. Then Comcast cut it down to 21 limited basic channels. Now it is 0 channels. In view of the fact that our lawmakers are corrupt do not expect to see any action to resolve this gouging. I am sure that Comcast will continue to raise prices on the DTA's until consumers are paying $5.00 or more per month without being able to view all programming that they are paying for. I cannot justify paying $9.95 plus tax per month for an HD STB that is only used a couple of weeks per year.

I am particularly irritated because I replaced two televisions in 2011 in guest bedrooms so visitors could watch TV without interfering with our viewing. At that time it was not necessary to use a STB to receive 70 extended basic channels. Then Comcast cut it down to 21 limited basic channels. Now it is 0 channels....