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

latimes.com

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

#91

Post by iguy »

calhoun137 wrote: post #88

Slightly off topic, Comcast actually stole my mom's modem that she bought from amazon! What happened is most likely the modem she bought was supposed to be returned to comcast by another customer, but that person instead just put it up for sale on amazon. Every so often a charge for a box rental would show up on her bill, she would go to the store in person to show them the receipt, get a refund and the charges would…

That sounds unpleasant for your mom. But how is this different to buying a stolen bicycle and having it confiscated back by its legal owner? I thought the law was clear that, even if you didn't know it was stolen, your purchase gives you no right to the goods.

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

#92

Post by garblegarble »

gamblor956 wrote: post #47
shapiro92 wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

EU citizens are discovering what GDPR exposure means for US companies that don't get significant revenue from EU customers: they simply start blocking the EU instead of complying. 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.

>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.

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

#93

Post by mark-r »

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?

When cable TV was new, that was its entire reason for existing. Not sure about the present landscape but I'm sure it happens somewhere.

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

#95

Post by ChuckMcM »

Funny anecdote, before Java was Java, it was a way for appliances to abstract out the complexity of the embedded system and allow designers to write a UX that would work the same way on all the products.

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.

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

#96

Post by dragonwriter »

bunderbunder wrote: post #64
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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

#97

Post by nickpsecurity »

oconnor663 wrote: post #53

> After the Spectrum fee rises within days to $7.50 a month, that will translate to at least $120 million. Monthly. Or at least $1.4 billion a year. 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…

Well, a $50 Roku boxI bought a relative streams HD from Netflix and other services. Way more than what a cable modem does. You'd have buy 28 million of them to hit $1.4 billion, but realistically they'd get volume discount. These companies sell less functionality for more money and keep charging after it's probably paid off.

Does that put it more into perspective?

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

#98

Post by femto113 »

The economies of scale are so great the margins are almost certainly fat. Other than cellphones I can't think of any electronic devices where that many identical units were being produced--millions and millions of indistinguishable boxes. About 20 years ago as a consultant in the EDA industry I got to tour of a set-top box manufacturing plant in Taiwan and it was fascinating. While the boxes were identical on the outside, on the inside they were doing everything possible to cut both component and manufacturing costs, including experimenting with paper based PCBs (apparently much cheaper than fiberglass?). I have to imagine they've only gotten better at cost optimization over time.

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

#99

Post by rb808 »

lozaning wrote: post #78
rb808 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

powerline networking is your friend.

Last time I tried this I had extreme packet loss if I plugged the two converters into outlets on different breakers, do you know if this is still the case?

I think it depends a lot of the wiring in the house as you've found. I think its normal to work across different circuits though - for me it worked OK. I'd expect newer models to be a bit smarter, but I imagine it doesnt work everywhere. Signal can be killed by some surge protectors & UPS or noisy motors etc.

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

#100

Post by dang »

danaos wrote: post #11
shapiro92 wrote: post #4

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

I wonder what percentage of HN readership is based in the EU.

Roughly a third.
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