[larrs]

Wonder if this will help Tivo at all:

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070705/D8Q68M3G0.html

 

[ZeoTiVo]

nice to see the article had both sides.. from my perspective this is the side that rings true

"But Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union in Washington, said it's convenient for cable companies to blame regulators when they've stalled about complying with the FCC rule for years. Cable operators also have had no problem raising rates regularly for various reasons.

"They raise rates three times faster than inflation every year, for more than a decade," he said. "Cable companies want to have absolute control. We don't think they should have it."

anyone that wants to go BooHoo for the cable company getting bullied by the FCC will need to have a very good reason for the quote I bolded above.

 

[bidger]

From the article:
"Time Warner Cable Inc. spokesman Alex Dudley said the company agrees with the cable industry's stance that the FCC cable card rule is a "tax" on consumers."

Does that make you think that TiVo will come out unscathed?

 

[ZeoTiVo]

From the article:
"Time Warner Cable Inc. spokesman Alex Dudley said the company agrees with the cable industry's stance that the FCC cable card rule is a "tax" on consumers."

Does that make you think that TiVo will come out unscathed?

well the spin may be that mean old TiVo helped this along but come on, that would b like the auto industry saying fuel standards is a tax on consumers.

Bet the rates won't go back down as these boxes become more widely made and cheaper to acquire.

What the FCC needs to do is tell the cable company to itemize their bills with the real cost for providing things instead of just a lump 40 bucks a month and then a DVR is 5$ extra or a STB is 10$ extra etc.. then fine, let them charge for everything with a fair profit attached. This whole idea of we are going to raise rates on everybody should be having consumers hopping mad at the cable companies

 

[larrs]

From the article:
"Time Warner Cable Inc. spokesman Alex Dudley said the company agrees with the cable industry's stance that the FCC cable card rule is a "tax" on consumers."

Does that make you think that TiVo will come out unscathed?

Tivo is such a small part of this. I would think the CE companies that made all of the TVs with cablecard slots in them would take the brunt of any ill will.

 

[ZeoTiVo]

Tivo is such a small part of this. I would think the CE companies that made all of the TVs with cablecard slots in them would take the brunt of any ill will.

those companies took the slots out after getting hit too many times by cable companies failing to install working cards and the consumer wants their money back from the TV manufacturer.

I have not gone to ranting in other threads for the sake of more civilized debate - but in this thread I will state clearly that the cable companies are shafting cable card installs and the consumer. Blaming the FCC for their latest round of price gouging to get yet more record profits seems to clear up that debate a good bit.

 

[bidger]

Seems like you're forgetting the S3, larrs.

I'm not saying the T-W rep was right, but it's a "tell" as far as Cable's attitude about the whole situation.

 

[vstone]

From the article:
"Time Warner Cable Inc. spokesman Alex Dudley said the company agrees with the cable industry's stance that the FCC cable card rule is a "tax" on consumers."
...

Yes, but the ATSC OTA tuner in all TV's is also a tax, since most of these tuners will never be used. Luckily it appears that the current chip sets include QAM with OTA. Can somebody knowledgable speak to this?

 

[SugarBowl]

It's interesting that the only place to get one of these uncoupled security devices (cablecard) is from the very same cable company that we're trying to get de-coupled from.

They can/will raise the rates for cable card rental by $1 every year if the cards catch on.

 

[HDTiVo]

News?

More like a walk down memory lane.

http://hdtivo.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/open-cable-comes-to-collect/

http://hdtivo.wordpress.com/2007/06/25/mso-pre-installed-cablecards/

http://hdtivo.wordpress.com/2007/05/16/should-cablecard-be-abandoned/

 

[bicker]

Wonder if this will help Tivo at all:

Unlikely. TiVo will still want a big chunk of change up-front, and that's an overwhelming obstacle for many folks.

 

[HDTiVo]

BTW, if I am the cable co, don't I get to say I am charging $X/mo more for the more expensive boxes, AND $Y/mo for the cableCARD(s), where Y is the price you pay for CC(s) in an S3 or TV?

 

[rodalpho]

I don't see why not. They're cable companies, customer satisfaction certainly isn't a priority. They'll gouge however they can.

 

[JTYoung1]

STB's are most likely a profit center for the cable companies and they don't want to give it up. On a recent statement that showed Comcast's new rates thay had a published price of $472 for failing to return a DVR. You know good and well that they are not paying that much for their equipment.

 

[larrs]

Seems like you're forgetting the S3, larrs.

I'm not saying the T-W rep was right, but it's a "tell" as far as Cable's attitude about the whole situation.

Not forgetting it, but how many S3s are in teh wild right now, 50K? There have to be at least a million cablecard TVs out there.

 

[SugarBowl]

STB's are most likely a profit center for the cable companies and they don't want to give it up. On a recent statement that showed Comcast's new rates thay had a published price of $472 for failing to return a DVR. You know good and well that they are not paying that much for their equipment.

sure. they can't get pay-per-view revenue without getting a box in your house.

And since there's no way to remove the 500+ channels from the guide that you don't receive, you're always tempted to upgrade your package.

 

[mattack]

Yes, but the ATSC OTA tuner in all TV's is also a tax, since most of these tuners will never be used.

Where do you get your statistics?

I don't have any proof to the contrary either, but there HAVE been lots of news articles about antennae suddenly popping back up *so that people could get the free HD signals*.

 

[bidger]

Not forgetting it, but how many S3s are in teh wild right now, 50K? There have to be at least a million cablecard TVs out there.

Mine has one, but I'm not using it and I would bet that there are proportionally more S3 users with Cable Card(s) in those units than folks with Cable Cards in their HDTVs.

 

[bicker]

STB's are most likely a profit center for the cable companies and they don't want to give it up.

Regular STBs are probably not a profit-center, from what I've read Comcast folks reveal. DVRs, however, most likely are.

On a recent statement that showed Comcast's new rates thay had a published price of $472 for failing to return a DVR. You know good and well that they are not paying that much for their equipment.

Please provide documentary evidence of what you're saying here. I don't believe you know how much they pay for their DVRs.

 

[rmassey]

S3 + 3r prepay + FREE HD OTA only = Problem solved

As expensive as the S3 is, it has allowed me to completely eliminate subscription content providers from the equation. YMMV