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How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

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Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#131

Post by stephengillie »

virmundi wrote: post #125
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the content providers are 'fixing the glitch' so to speak. With the launch of the new Disney streaming Netflix competitor, etc. we'll be back in a world of silo'd content with bundles and fees and many people who want to do things legit-no-piracy are going to be having to subscribe to multiple services.

Let it go. So consuming. One of the best things of my self inflicted phone ADHD is that I don't care for movies or TV. I start a movie, then think, "This is not worth it". I stop. I never return. Slowly I've come to accept and appreciate not watching TV or movies. If you're into sports, well, I don't know, ESPN online?

NFL and other leagues have streaming on their own sites now. NFL is $75/year for all games on-demand.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#132

Post by sli »

Based purely on the dismal quality of these things, it cannot be very much. They don't seem to have gotten any better with time at all. Extremely laggy, awful UX, they run hot, they use a surprisingly high amount of electricity just to idle, and are generally just barely usable. Kodi on a Raspberry Pi performs better in pretty much all cases (except for, well, not having live TV -- usually), which is shameful on the part of these massive cable boxes.

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.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#133

Post by BooneJS »

stephengillie wrote: post #131
virmundi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let it go. So consuming. One of the best things of my self inflicted phone ADHD is that I don't care for movies or TV. I start a movie, then think, "This is not worth it". I stop. I never return. Slowly I've come to accept and appreciate not watching TV or movies. If you're into sports, well, I don't know, ESPN online?

NFL and other leagues have streaming on their own sites now. NFL is $75/year for all games on-demand.

after the games end. Live games are still DirecTV Sunday Ticket or some Sunday Ticket streaming service that only "some addresses" are eligible for.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#134

Post by diogenescynic »

stephengillie wrote: post #131
virmundi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let it go. So consuming. One of the best things of my self inflicted phone ADHD is that I don't care for movies or TV. I start a movie, then think, "This is not worth it". I stop. I never return. Slowly I've come to accept and appreciate not watching TV or movies. If you're into sports, well, I don't know, ESPN online?

NFL and other leagues have streaming on their own sites now. NFL is $75/year for all games on-demand.

And NHL and MLB are about $99. It’s a great time to be a sports fan in my opinion. Sports packages used to be so much more expensive.

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.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#135

Post by diogenescynic »

gruez wrote: post #118
bunderbunder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still literally don't need it. Which isn't to say that most people don't want it really really bad , but still, it's different, and words matter. 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.

>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. 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.

A generation of consumers have been raised to rent their content. I have DirecTV now, bundled with my cell plan so I pay like $15 a month. I have an MLB.tv subscription and I buy most of the rest of my media on iTunes. When movies are on sale they are like $6 and tv seasons for $10. I bought the entire Seinfeld catalog for like $60–easily worth the price and not to have to watch reruns with commercials. Generally, I spend $30 a month, so after a few years I have hundreds of movies and a dozens of TV shows. So most of the time I watch news on DirecTV, MLB.tv, or a movie in my iTunes library. I literally don’t understand Netflix and most of the shows on there haven’t been worth it for me to subscribe yet. But I definitely wouldn’t pay for a monthly streaming subscription. Maybe if I had kids.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#136

Post by dgzl »

drwagner wrote: post #54
dgzl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past year, I've been trying to convince my grandparents to ditch cable for internet TV, and the transition has been surprisingly difficult. After two attempts (I don't live near them), I am still not successful, however I did reduce the TV/phone/internet bundle from $250 to $200. Next time I see them, I'm coming prepared with the items that prevented me from succeeding before, and hopefully I'll be reducing t…

You can also try a MoCA adapter. I've three Motorola 2.0 MoCA devices and they work great; much better speeds than WiFi albeit not as fast as Ethernet (but also without having to run Cat6 throughout the house).

I looked into this, but I don't understand what is different between this anda regular modem/router?

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#137

Post by mcpherrinm »

dgzl wrote: post #136
drwagner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also try a MoCA adapter. I've three Motorola 2.0 MoCA devices and they work great; much better speeds than WiFi albeit not as fast as Ethernet (but also without having to run Cat6 throughout the house).

I looked into this, but I don't understand what is different between this anda regular modem/router?

Moca is like short range, high speed cable LAN. My parents house is wired for cable TV but not Ethernet. So the modem is in the basement, and a pair of moca adapters get internet up to the 2nd floor bedroom where there's a wireless access point.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#138

Post by astura »

gruez wrote: post #118
bunderbunder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still literally don't need it. Which isn't to say that most people don't want it really really bad , but still, it's different, and words matter. 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.

>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. 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 can be borrowed from the library or rented from RedBox. You can buy whole seasons of TV shows for like ~$10. DVDs can also be sold when you're done and reduce your expenses further.

It depends on what you want to watch.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#139

Post by astura »

dpeck wrote: post #74
reaperducer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you literally don't need at all 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.

cable tv without broadcast... does that combination exist anywhere?

Yes... Cable is widely available here, yet I live too far away from any broadcast stations to pick them up.

Re: How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask

#140

Post by matheusmoreira »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70
dragonwriter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have a monopoly on a dying service 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…

Yep, the content providers are 'fixing the glitch' so to speak. With the launch of the new Disney streaming Netflix competitor, etc. we'll be back in a world of silo'd content with bundles and fees and many people who want to do things legit-no-piracy are going to be having to subscribe to multiple services.

It's sad. Sometimes I boot it up only to find that movies I remember saving to my list aren't on the service anymore.

"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.

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