cable cards

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I emailed comcast about their cable cards. They said that there was a $10.75 charge per month per card. The present cards are not two way so you would not get PAY PER VIEW or ON DEMAND programs. That means an additional $21.50 a month for Comcast to receive high def programs. I hope that the pricing is a mistake. I thought I had read that with certain comcast pricing packages cable cards were free from comcast. I guess I will have to e mail comcast back again to find out. I can not see paying $800 for a ser 3 then have to pay $12.99 a month for Tivo service and then an additional $21.50 a month to comcast.

[bkdtv]

Whoever gave you that information at Comcast was incorrect.

The average customer pays $0 for their CableCard, because you get free one as part of a digital cable subscription. Additional CableCards run $0 to $3, each, depending on the Comcast division. The $10.75 sounds more like Comcast's cost to buy the card, and what you would have to pay if you lost it; or perhaps that includes the installation fee for a service visit.

When ordering CableCards, it's best to actually go to the local office rather than ordering over the phone. When you order over the phone, they almost always want to schedule an installation. When you go to the local office, you have a good chance of them giving you the cards to install yourself, avoiding a visit from the installer. By going to the local office, you can also better explain what you need -- most CSRs over the phone don't have the training to understand that a single box can support two CableCards. They assume you want two to add two different TVs, and the cost to add programming to one TV is different than the cost to add programming to two TVs.

[classicsat]

$10.75 seems high, but not totally off base to me. $5 for card rental, $5 for additional card activation, both monthly.
I can only imagine the cards cost the provider somewhere near $100 each.