Groups Aim To Make It Easier To Own A Cable TV Box Instead Of Renting

[NJCher]

The amount cable companies make off people who rent their cable boxes is astronomical! I am one of the stupid ones, and I am going to order my own box as soon as I get home from work tonight.


Groups Aim To Make It Easier To Own A Cable TV Box Instead Of Renting

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A study by two Senate Democrats, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, estimated that 99 percent of cable TV subscribers rent their set-top boxes and pay on average $231 a year to do so. According to the two senators, the cable industry reaps more than $19.5 billion a year from all those rentals.

"It's really ridiculous that people pay rental fees for these devices," says John Bergmayer, an attorney with the consumer group Public Knowledge. "It's sort of like the stories that still pop up every few years; you know, the little old person that's still paying to rent a black rotary phone from AT&T, and over the lifetime of that device they pay thousands of dollars."

snip

Read more--there are some exciting ideas out there.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/10/13/448301896/groups-aim-to-make-it-easier-to-own-a-cable-tv-box-instead-of-renting


Cher

[yeoman6987]

1. I am dumb to. Mine is 10 bucks a month with Comcast

I am not sure if I'd want to own the box though.

[Waldorf]

4. Count me also in the dumb group. I have 4 of the damn things in the house. I have ATT Uverse.

[yeoman6987]

5. Actually come to think about it

I do to. But 3 are the little routers that are 2.50 a pop and don't have the pay channels.

[NightWatcher]

2. This is news, that cable companies are screwing us over?

[saturnsring]

3. direct tv did this to me - i owned my boxes but they charged me for them

they said the money was for the active jk not the box.

[onehandle]

6. I'm a 'cable cutter.' But I get my Internet from Comcast.

They gave me a cable box for free, just so they could count me amongst their 'viewers' to their advertisers.

Never plugged it in. Only took it, in case we needed it for some reason.

I have a $20 HDTV antenna for the rare times we watch local TV. (Only once in the last year, to watch the Pope conduct Mass here in Philly).

[lpbk2713]

7. I pay monthly for a digital converter box.

And then a little bit more for the remote control. They are insulting the consumers'
intelligence. What good would it be without the remote control?

[dilby]

8. Sounds like a great idea but will probably be completely terrible.

Some of the cable providers are still delivering their content in a mpeg-2 transport stream which is pretty old technology but extremely reliable, some have moved to h264 and use adaptive bit rates for the best experience of the user. But we have h265 here ready to go and anything you buy today probably will not support the improvements of tomorrow. Video is an industry that is exploding right now with people getting content over their cell phones, iPods, Telivisions and computers. Utilizing new streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime, AppleTV.
For them to have a single box that will support everything it means an increased cost to you for the box, you maybe paying for features your cable company does not support. And over time as 4k and 8k roles out with new compression technology you will need a new box to support it.