How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask
latimes.com
latimes.com
They have a monopoly on a dying service you literally don't need at all, and most people hate having to deal with them. The pricing and contracts are antagonistic to customers. Is it just momentum at this point?
It's certainly overpriced for what it is, but it's still much, much cheaper than a complete package, which is easily twice that figure.
...but between the so-called promotional pricing, the dicking around with another pile of box rental fees and assorted add-on costs, I just didn't have it in me. On some level I just decided that I would rather risk "missing out" on some minor bit of savings than buy anything more than the single thing I really needed to buy from Comcast.
If I had any other real options I wouldn't buy anything from them. But they are the only option for something I definitely need. I'm not about to pay them for anything more.
Cable providers literary make money by giving TV service for free. They sell pre programmed channel spots like supermarket sell shelf space - You cant change channel order :/ plus they track/sell TV viewing data
Neither the access nor the bundled content portions are really dying. The assumption they must be bought from the same vendor is, but outside of very high speed plans, internet access tends to have data caps (sometimes capped unless you buy a TV bundle from the ISP as well as internet service), and OTT services with comparable content are just as expensive as cable plans (and mostly from cable/satellite vendors, though Google and Sony have services too), so you end up spending the same money plus eating your data cap if you buy separately instead of getting the content outside of your cap (or maybe even getting the content and getting rid of your cap at the same time.)
Edit: To clarify, there are 3 tiers of GamePass. What you get depends on where you purchase and access from.
USA: only preseason live
GB, Mexico & maybe some others: regular season games live (no postseason)
Rest of the world: All games live + RedZone
Seems like they get paid a lot by existing corporate players for exclusive distribution rights in the states.
Didn’t realize the NFL games weren’t live tho. That would be a dealbreaker for me. The NHL and MLB games are live, but there are blackout restrictions. A VPN will get around that though.
"Piracy" still manages to offer a superior service even after all these years. It's amazing how copyright actively prevents people from properly competing with it.
Not really. Data caps are unnatural and are simply a method to fleece users, high bandwidth or not. Normal Internet plans have no caps.
Unless you live in a place without broadcast television, or little broadcast television, and with little to no internet service.
So pretty much 20% of the United States. The nation is much larger than the east and west coasts.
https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-sta...
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210...
And anecdotally, I know several people who live in urban places who still don't have access to cable television.
Back to the topic, though — the OP stated, "you literally don't need at all." My point is that his postulation is invalid for millions of people.
Cable internet plus OTT live TV service is probably more expensive in most markets than Cable internet plus Cable TV with equivalent channel lineup, you still have to deal with the cable provider, and the OTT TV counts against your internet data cap, if (as is likely without a same-provider TV plan or an extra payment for uncapped data) you have one.
Moreover, unless you're an extreme binge watcher, I'm guessing you could still consume more than you can eat of video entertainment for less money than the cable companies charge by buying DVDs. Let alone Netflix's DVD service.
In the economic sense of “need”, it isn't different at all.
Outside of the economic sense, generally “need” is meaningless unless qualified with a purpose.
> Moreover, unless you're an extreme binge watcher, I'm guessing you could still consume more than you can eat of video entertainment for less money than the cable companies charge by buying DVDs.
Buying DVDs is not effective for getting current news, sports, etc., however, whether direct coverage or timely commentary.
how? let's say you're on some expensive cable plan, $120/mo and DVDs cost $15. that works out to 8 movies a month, which might cut it if you only watch a couple of hours of TV on the weekends, but is nowhere enough if you watch daily.
DVDs are cheaper per hour if you get less-current movies or, even better, less-current TV collections (e.g., the Friends complete series is currently $70 on Amazon, for 80+ hours.)
So, if you are concerned merely with quantity of video content, it may be true that DVDs are cheaper than cable.
If you have concerns about the specific content, then the claim becomes harder to defend.
It depends on what you want to watch.
Later, satellite-carried "Superstations" were added like WPIX, WTBS, WGN, etc...
Later still, pay television services like HBO and Cinemax were added.
Even later, we ended up with what we have today.
I grew up in rural southeast US and I've always associated cable with cities/suburbs and had broadcast/satellite (old giant ones most until middle school).
My options for broadband are cable, or.... nothing.
I mean, I guess technically I can get DSL for $40 more a month than my whole cable bill for 1/10th the bandwidth.
The biggest problem I've found is that the cable company installed their cable modem on the entirely opposite side of the house from where the living room is (where the office is), and the wifi signal is too week to stream video. My general options are either a) get a repeater, or b) try setting up a second internet source from the living room cable (not sure if it's internet ready).
This is still 200 Mbps, better than the Wi-Fi the device could get.
200Mbps is their real PHY speed, 900Mbps is just a Scam
Thanks for the link, it is an impressive article and while I work in IT, the electronic may be a bit off my league (I just solder a bit around IoT devices and flash them).
I realized with your comment that I have never actually tested the plugs when they are next to each other (say, on an extender). I did not expect there would be a physical limitation below the advertized 1Gbps (I now all I got 400 Mbps I think but I am not at home to get that with a local iperf loop). If they cannot deliver close to that I would be pissed off :)
I have, again from memory, a 2x1Gbps tplink pair.
This said, my power cabling is sub par so this was the obvious reason for me for the lower bandwidth.
A cheap Ethernet cord would fix the problem. Move the router closer to the office.
I think sometimes the psychological aspect of it isn't appreciated. The whole point of plopping down on the couch and turning on the TV is to decompress. It's great that streaming services allow you to choose what to watch when, but if you've been figuring things out and making decisions all day, that's what you want to get away from.
Traditional broadcast TV and cable keeps delivering something even if you do nothing. You can override it (by changing the channel or using the DVR), but you need only exercise as much control as you feel like at a given moment.
Even YouTube can serve this purpose if you get a decent set of subscriptions going and loads of TVs have this built in these days (even if you didn't really want it). For others, there's Chromecast or similar to put these things on the big screen if you don't have a computer or other "smart" device already hooked up.
I have read accounts from people who have said that they need to have some kind of coherent sound around them - radio, tv, other people talking, etc.
Their argument is usually that without that constant chatter, they would have to be left alone with the thoughts in their head, and they don't want that.
I find such a position utterly alien, as a person who enjoys quiet time, pondering and thinking about things. I can understand wanting to "shut it out" occasionally and just "veg-ing" - but the way these individuals talked, it sounded like anxiety and fear for them to be left alone with their thoughts.
A possibility I found both disturbing, and depressing.
It's not like people have to rent cable boxes. By law, you can get an STB from Motorola or wherever, and a CableCARD for a nominal monthly fee (couple of dollars).
- Access to a specified list of channels she likes
- Selecting content should be as easy as on basic cable: type in three numbers on the remote
That’s it. I’ve so far failed to find the replacement. If we were to cut cord today we’d still have to subscribe to multiple services to get the mix of content, each service with their own subscription and UI and menus to navigate. So alas we still hang on to basic cable.
My last bill shows them charging me $21.99 per month for that box. (That's $263.88 a year not including taxes.)
Last week, I called Frontier FiOS to cancel the cable TV but keep the internet. After the customer rep cancelled the tv, I asked if she was mailing out a shipping box so I could return the Motorola. She said she wasn't going to bother with it. So there's one anecdote to gauge how much the hardware is worth to them. (I do see that used ones sell for ~$50 on ebay.)
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=motorola+QIP7232&source=lnms...
But you know damn well if I ever lose that box in my attic, some day they're coming after me.
I finally gave in and pay more per month for internet-only just so i don't have to store their damn box in my attic and I'm not inflating their TV subscriber numbers.
Finally purchased my own [1], which will pay for itself after a year. This is one of the easiest ways to save money.
Spectrum and Comcast both rely on the same third-parties to supply their gear but Comcast works with partners like Arris to build their own custom boxes. They have their own custom OS running on the box. They're really fast and have a very modern UI. For instance it'll open sidebars to show current sports games with realtime scores. They also have their voice remote feature which, at first was a total gimmick to me, but ultimately became really helpful. You rarely know what channel # you want but to say "go to TLC" or "go to the world series" is really handy. They also have a remote control with an accelerometer that will glow when it jiggles, unlike any competitor. This is very useful at night.
Meanwhile my Spectrum box is virtually a thin client. For things like on-demand it's piping commands across the network to a remote host that is rendering what is displayed on your screen. The latency is horrible.
I've cut the cord once or twice with services like Playstation TV and Sling... but none of them really shake a stick to a proper cable plan. I'm disappointed with this price hike and Spectrum's hardware but for folks (my wife and I) who grew up in the generation of cable TV it's a difficult habit to break.
For me an even worse experience than either has been the Arris box Verizon/Frontier deployed to Sarasota. It performs like the thin client you don't like. It's slow as the 90s-vintage SciAtl Comcast box and doesn't have knobs to increase program information font size (amongst other UI negatives). I'm biding my 6 months on Frontier before I bounce back to Comcast despite the former's far greater program selection.
The slow button press is how I feel about DirecTV. I could simply never use it because I find the 1 second delay absolutely intolerable.
Apparently in order to deal with stolen modems, comcast simply charges whatever customer has that modem regardless of whether or not the modem itself was supposed to be returned by another customer but never was. That is one hell of a way to get your stolen modem's back. Can you imagine if you went to the golf course and had your own clubs which you bought on amazon, but the course charged you for club rental every time you went, until they demand you hand over your clubs, and force you to buy another set to be allowed to play?
That is how comcast harassed my mom for a year and a half, stole her modem, and tried to charge her rent for a different customers box.
The hardware (heck, even the software) is the same or very similar for the most part.
Smartphones made the hw price (and form factors) go down a lot.
If your decoder is DTV or Cable there's an extra cost related to the receiver, but that has also getting cheaper as well.
Long gone are the times of the first receivers where you had several ICs with dedicated functions and had to shuffle the data around in not so straightforward ways (the first DTV receivers had dedicated MPEG2 decoder ICs, I suppose DVD players had a similar architecture, then became integrated with time). Now modern smartphones decode more complex video streams with much less energy expenditure)
Almost certainly no asics, so the cost is going to be dominated by commodity parts-- displays, audio-visual jacks and then there's the branded plastic case, graphics, labels.
There's an iFixit teardown of the chromecast here: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Chromecast+2015+Teardown/501...
Basically, 5 or 6 IC's and related trimmings--- BOM cost? I am going to guess around $35-- that's what google sells it for. Since they're making money not on the device itself but rather the online activity that becomes enabled from using the device, I expect the retail price would be roughly the BOM cost.
A little more money if you're looking at a proper set-top, I guess, though I haven't actually seen a cable box in a long time. Are they roku-sized now, or just huge mostly empty boxes?
I haven't seen a new one in a while either, but the last time I used one (at a relative's house IIRC), it was the same-old, same-old:
A box about the size of a DVD player, a bit larger (smaller than a VCR, though), mostly empty inside. Usually if it's a DVR, there's a hard drive, and the board is mostly a computer, generally running some kind of embedded proprietary closed-source RTOS. Occasionally you'll see linux, android, or some flavor of Windows CE. Beyond that - yeah, empty air.
I know that some of the very simple cable boxes are about the size of a Roku, but I don't think any of them are like a Chromecast (that is, usb drive size).
Tuners can be cheap or they can be expensive depending on the features you want. I don't think Broadcom's full-band capture tuner, which IIRC is basically a 2GHz ADC, is very cheap. It allows things like pre-tuning to adjacent channels which hastens channel changes. Security on set-tops is a big issue(as well as on OTT devices but STBs are crazy) and that may increase costs. Legacy interfaces like cable cards(no longer needed) increase costs and development time. Cable box SoCs(usually from Broadcom) are beasts and also not cheap. They support things like HDMI in and out, transcoding, multiple video streams(for Picture-in-Picture), etc. They are not in the same league as a Chromecast.
Don't forget about software. A lot of the stack is custom and needs teams of people working year after year to sort-of get it right(STB software is generally horrible). Each MSO(cable company) requests specific changes and customizations(beyond just branding).
Now that's not to say that you couldn't design an IPTV system which uses something like a Chromecast. This is often done and the hardware can be cheaper. I think it stresses out the network more vs, say, a broadcast design where you're dealing with a massive asymmetrical content delivery system which is just pushing the same bits to everyone. It's probably much cheaper to setup a cable headend for 250k+ subscribers than it is to make a IPTV system for the same number of people.
A TiVo box is basically equivalent to a modern set top box(give or take...DVR vs zapper, for instance). I would start with that to get an idea of what a cable box should cost.
Source: 10 or so years in the STB industry. I left because the industry is dying.
True, but a basic ATSC/DVB/ISTB shouldn't be too expensive. Maybe cable ones are more expensive, but the tech is basically the same. Satellite is pricier.
> Cable box SoCs(usually from Broadcom) are beasts and also not cheap. They support things like HDMI in and out, transcoding, multiple video streams(for Picture-in-Picture), etc.
Yes, depends on the manufacturer, I've used/tested a couple of products from different manufacturers (including Intel's adventure on that area) but most stream boxes use the same hardware, chromecast is the exception, not the rule
"Not cheap" but IIRC $10/$20 for the SOC itself (but that was 10 years ago)
> STB software is generally horrible
YES. MPEG-TS decoding (especially metadata) usually goes "how sausages are made".
On top of that, you have mfgs having to hack in power management support to meet european regulations and it's just a shit show.
It's now a distant memory being able to switch between channels instantly. I should at least be able to page through the menus quickly.
Of course, my cable provider had to make like three visits before they managed to scrounge up two working cards.
You could have a predictive system that would decode the three most likely next channels and start decoding them. In the best case, this would move the latency of the first switch close to zero, and of subsequent switches to 1/2 or 1/3.
To save energy, you could get one of these fancy remotes that they have for telefone conferences, that can detect when you pick it up. Once you lift the remote, start the extra tuners.
What could be done, on the cheap, Cable provider wide is authoritative server ready to give you arbitrarily generated I frames with 1/60 time resolution on demand, as most cable boxes nowadays are two way anyway (they need upstream link to transmit all the spyin^^^ channel usage statistics back).
AT&T just brought fiber to my neighborhood last month with a $40/mo 100mb/s plan. That's 3x cheaper than the > 100mb Comcast plan I was on that required me to have internet and basic cable.
Both cap at 1TB and AT&T had no gear rental fees and a $10/out of contract monthly fee after a year. So far the only MAJOR downside is I can't use 1.1.1.1 for my DNS which took awhile to reverse engineer after I broke the internet...twice. A fix is coming, but I found 6 months of internet forums saying that.
And I think 5 of my neighbors are about to make the switch too. The Comcast person on the phone started to make their scripted argument for how they could reduce my plan. I said $40 and no TV or save the oxygen for the next customer.
In the end, it's probably just equally as evil but it works out far better for my bills.
The lower end ones with cloud PVR look like they're crazy cheap, like a low end cell phone. I wouldn't be surprised if the IP only ones were $50 in Q10000. There's a bunch of implementation notes about fiddly expensive analog calibration for the terrestrial and docsis transceivers, but it looks like the two major ASIC vendors both ship turnkey calibration systems to help reduce manufacturing cost. One of them has a nice menu of prevalidated contract manufacturers that already have production lines ready to go once you sign.
The 'demo' application was a set top box because SGI was making a lot of hay with doing 'video on demand' in Florida and how that was the new hotness for selling servers.
So we had this demo that had Fang (the mascot) bouncing around in his virtual world where you could click on things to bring up different activities, and there were movie posters in this virtual world that if you clicked on them would bring up a screen letting you rent the movie or watch a trailer etc. Some excellent animations from an artist named Joe Palrang and it all ran on a Sparcstation 10.
We knew of course that set top boxes (STBs) at the time were 8 bit micros (think Zilog Z80 or Motorola 6811's) and cheap but hey with this cool new UI cable companies would surely be moving upscale on the STB. So we asked a number of cable companies where they saw their set top box in five years. (which would put it at 1998) and they were saying, "Well we are expecting big changes there, we are probably going to spend $100 per box rather than the current $50 per box."
That went over poorly since we needed way more oomph than that to host our fancy virtual world. And while there was a plan to keep the Java kernel small (45K bytes was the target) we didn't see a lot of hope with that cheap of a machine to run it on. As I recall that was around the time when Sun decided to cancel the whole thing.
Cable companies, like any company that tries to extract value by delivering streamed copyrighted content to consumers, are always squeezed nearly out of existence by rights holders in an unending battle to keep all the pennies. It is quite depressing and convinced me I didn't want to be in the cable business in my career.
I agree with the overall "screw those monopolistic rent seekers" theme, but I hate seeing summaries like this. Is $1.4 billion a lot? If you told me it was $100 million per year, that would still sound like a lot, but apparently in this context that would represent not a lot? These are meaningless big numbers.
Does that put it more into perspective?
On top of that, why does it still cost an additional monthly fee to record locally to a DVR? Surely there is little to no additional cost involved in that, that isn't easily paid for by the standard monthly subscription price. And unless you've got one hell of a box, you're still limited to only two shows. It seems like if a monthly fee is involved, the DVR tech would be considerably better. Maybe something closer to just saving recordings as standard, personal on-demand media.
My mother used to rent movies on demand, but she's gotten a refund every single time because they've been unwatchable. She's since stopped doing that, at least.
What is missing is a roll up service. I want an application that has a list of my services and then presents me a uniform search box for all them! That would rock. Thought about writing one but it would just get shutdown for violation of the terms of service. Also a Kodi plunging for Amazon, NetFlix and XM would rock at some point.
FWIW I used to swear by Roku but then they started randomly adding channels to my screen. This was basically a paid ad, if you were a service provider you can pay Roku to force your channel onto the device. Once that started I chucked all my Roku devices.
Compute --> DAC DAC --> TV --> Sound Bar for videos (also TV apps output to sound bar) DAC --> Tube Amp (for music played from computer) Record Player --> Tube Amp Tube Amp --> 2 good speakers
Ideal would would be Apple TV with XM, iPlayer, Netflix, Amazon App - HDMI to 4K TV - TV to sound bar Apple TV with Optical to DAC to Tube Amp.
I have looked at some of the HDMI sound extractors but there seems to be limits on things you can play, having a remote, DRM.
Everything is controlled by Logictech Harmony.
That said, the charges are still a ripoff, and just one of many reasons I do not miss paying for cable TV.
My parents are middle-class empty nesters, and IIRC, they have boxes in the kitchen, living room, home office, and maybe another in the master bedroom?
Clearly they do not 'need' that many, yet they have them. This is just another way in which the rigid, inflexible model of legacy television generates excessive revenue: one cannot carry a TV and cable box around the house as easily as they can a tablet PC or iPad.
I own a DVR and 4 or 5 "satellite" type boxes, cut the cord and looked to see how much I could get from them. Basically wasn't worth my time with hundreds of people in the same boat as me in my city.
A good chuck of that fee is goes to licensing. The guide software, guide data, DVR, VOD, etc. often have per-box licensing fees the provider has to pay.
The $250 also seams low to me. I’ve seen numbers in the $600-$900 range. Cable STBs are also much more expensive than IPTV devices because they have tunners, upstream modulators, MOCA (for whole home DVR), switched digital video, etc. vs a IPTV box that has an Ethernet port and basically just decodes mpeg4 multicast streams. The cost of STBs is one of the reasons MSOs like the idea of network based DVR.
Ultimately I view it like I did music... give me a reasonable way to access and pay and I'll do so. And when iTunes came out I deleted my 10 gigs of mp3's and paid for music. I'll do the same when the media company come to their senses and respect the cost of scale they now have. I can live with that.
I'm sure if I had felt like setting it up, usenet automation + Plex server would have been even better but this was simple enough.
Again, I had cable and I had a cable box but it was that much easier to watch streaming torrents that I still watched unlicensed recordings like that.
Basically, if you are going to charge me a monthly fee to borrow some set top box, you need to make the set top box worth the expense. My only "legit" option was something that looked like a 1998 leftover that barely worked, worked slowly, and cost me almost $10/month to borrow. If I wanted one of the nicer boxes, I had to sign up for unrelated services like some "triple play" with phone service included. Not happening.
It's becoming rather farcical that I may have to use Tor to browse from ... a European IP.
† This perception is obviously a huge problem for papers like the L.A. Times (and for writers, in general). For better or worse, this is how people see it, now. If you don't like the source, then you just imagine substituting in another one, like you're buying pork futures (or whatever the opposite of original reporting is).
Edit: I'm not saying that's a good thing, guys. I agree with dionidium.
I suspect we're more than 25% of HN's audience.
(Realistically, a mirror is the realistic alternative. Two have been posted and downvoted into oblivion. So it seems the HN community along with the LA Times support censorship. Nice.).
If two draconian policies don't add up to a level playing field, why not go for the hat trick!
It's an LA Times article written by an LA Times reporter published in the LA Times for the benefit of LA Times readers.
What European alternative do you suggest?
I'm not suggesting a European alternative, I'm saying that this does not belong on hackernews.
Asto it being original reporting, that's a little hard for people to factor in when it's entirely blocked.
Because there's no way any company can actually comply with the GPDR; many of the rules conflict with each other. GDPR is a regulatory trap intended to allow the authorities to initiate selective enforcement against non-EU companies.
Source, please? My reading of the GDPR is as a broad set of sensible rules requiring that you acquire consent for gathering and using people's data (and that consent can be revoked -- or withheld for non-core functionality). The law isn't machine code, it's a document interpreted by humans against the spirit of the law: act in good faith and respect people's privacy and you'll be fine.
When I see a company that doesn't even want to consider doing business with a European because GDPR, I see a company that I want as far away from my personal data as possible.