
How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask - ilamont
http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-spectrum-cable-rate-hike-20181030-story.html
======
drblast
I have the same reaction every time I read about any cable company, and
that's, "WTF are you all still giving them your money for?!"

They have a monopoly on a dying service you literally don't need at all, and
most people hate having to deal with them. The pricing and contracts are
antagonistic to customers. Is it just momentum at this point?

~~~
reaperducer
_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.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Most of the people living in the US between the coasts still live in urban
areas. Only a few states have a minority of urban dwellers: Maine, West
Virginia, Mississippi, Vermont. Many large interior states have overwhelmingly
urban populations: Arizona (90%), Colorado (86%), Illinois (89%), Michigan
(75%), Ohio (78%), Nevada (94%), Texas (85%), Utah (90%).

[https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-
sta...](https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states)

~~~
reaperducer
So if you're not in the "most" category, then what? You don't count? You're
not a citizen?

And anecdotally, I know several people who live in urban places who still
don't have access to cable television.

Back to the topic, though — the OP stated, "you literally don't need at all."
My point is that his postulation is invalid for millions of people.

~~~
na85
Do they actually need television?

------
jasode
I have a FiOS Motorola QIP7232 cable box with a builtin 320GB harddrive (circa
2013).[1]

My last bill shows them charging me $21.99 per month for that box. (That's
$263.88 a year not including taxes.)

Last week, I called Frontier FiOS to cancel the cable TV but keep the
internet. After the customer rep cancelled the tv, I asked if she was mailing
out a shipping box so I could return the Motorola. She said she wasn't going
to bother with it. So there's one anecdote to gauge how much the hardware is
worth to them. (I do see that used ones sell for ~$50 on ebay.)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=motorola+QIP7232&source=lnms...](https://www.google.com/search?q=motorola+QIP7232&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

~~~
pasbesoin
You might want to hold onto it for a bit. I read the occasional "horror"
stories about people getting big bills for "unreturned equipment" that they
were previously told not to return. Or that was returned but never logged;
suggestions are, for example, that if you return your Comcast box to one of
their storefronts/offices, you make sure to get a receipt, preferably one
having the equipment ID's on it.

~~~
rconti
Agreed. Every time I try to return equipment to comcast, they ship me another
unit because "we noticed you have cable TV service, but no cable box on your
account!"

But you know damn well if I ever lose that box in my attic, some day they're
coming after me.

I finally gave in and pay more per month for internet-only just so i don't
have to store their damn box in my attic and I'm not inflating their TV
subscriber numbers.

------
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.

------
samcampbell
I don't pay for cable, but there are similar economics in Internet
routers/modems. Comcast used to charge me $10/month to lease their unit. After
a few months of spotty WiFi (used cell data instead), I finally called.
Service rep said that ~1/2 of the my specific router model were defective.

Finally purchased my own [1], which will pay for itself after a year. This is
one of the easiest ways to save money.

[1] [https://amzn.to/2Js5q3e](https://amzn.to/2Js5q3e)

~~~
nickreese
Nice disclaimer on that affiliate link.

~~~
samcampbell
Good point- This is an affiliate link. I actually don't want the money from
Amazon from the referral link, I signed up for Amazon Associates for the API
access to their product catalog for a side project. Amazon requires a certain
level of activity for this. So if someone happens to buy, you're supporting a
side project.

------
whalesalad
On a slightly related note, I am highly disappointed with the Spectrum boxes
and really miss my Comcast X1 box.

Spectrum and Comcast both rely on the same third-parties to supply their gear
but Comcast works with partners like Arris to build their own custom boxes.
They have their own custom OS running on the box. They're really fast and have
a very modern UI. For instance it'll open sidebars to show current sports
games with realtime scores. They also have their voice remote feature which,
at first was a total gimmick to me, but ultimately became really helpful. You
rarely know what channel # you want but to say "go to TLC" or "go to the world
series" is really handy. They also have a remote control with an accelerometer
that will glow when it jiggles, unlike any competitor. This is very useful at
night.

Meanwhile my Spectrum box is virtually a thin client. For things like on-
demand it's piping commands across the network to a remote host that is
rendering what is displayed on your screen. The latency is horrible.

I've cut the cord once or twice with services like Playstation TV and Sling...
but none of them really shake a stick to a proper cable plan. I'm disappointed
with this price hike and Spectrum's hardware but for folks (my wife and I) who
grew up in the generation of cable TV it's a difficult habit to break.

~~~
HankB99
I have the Comcast "X1 Infinity Entertainment System" and IMO it stinks. It's
a bad sign when the instructions tell you to restart it to solve problems. And
at best, the delay from button press to response is nearly intolerable. I
think basic UI guidelines suggest something on the order of 1/4 second and
this box usually takes over a second. At times I sit there wondering if I need
to press the button again. Usually I don't. I just need to be patient. At
other times it simply does not respond. I can see a green LED light on the box
when I press a button on the remote but other than that, nothing happens.
That's when I know it is time to pull the plug. In a competitive market
products like this would not be tolerated.

~~~
rconti
When I saw X1, it looked nice, and now Comcast is pushing the Plume pods (or
something that looks like them) as repeaters. They're doing generally slick
things with individual device blocking and such. That is to say, offering
services that are actually harder to do on your own.

The slow button press is how I feel about DirecTV. I could simply never use it
because I find the 1 second delay absolutely intolerable.

------
calhoun137
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 stop. Then 3 months went by and the charge
appeared on the bill again. This went on for a year and a half. No one in
customer service could help and at the end they said the only solution is just
give us the modem and buy another one.

Apparently in order to deal with stolen modems, comcast simply charges
whatever customer has that modem regardless of whether or not the modem itself
was supposed to be returned by another customer but never was. That is one
hell of a way to get your stolen modem's back. Can you imagine if you went to
the golf course and had your own clubs which you bought on amazon, but the
course charged you for club rental every time you went, until they demand you
hand over your clubs, and force you to buy another set to be allowed to play?

That is how comcast harassed my mom for a year and a half, stole her modem,
and tried to charge her rent for a different customers box.

~~~
iguy
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.

~~~
calhoun137
fair enough. I guess the difference is that bike rental stores don't have
automated systems which apparently have a bug where they charge the unknowing
victims of a crime rent for previously rented bikes which were stolen and sold
online.

------
raverbashing
Do you really wanna know how much it costs? Look at similar streaming hardware
(think FireStick, Roku, etc)

The hardware (heck, even the software) is the same or very similar for the
most part.

Smartphones made the hw price (and form factors) go down a lot.

If your decoder is DTV or Cable there's an extra cost related to the receiver,
but that has also getting cheaper as well.

Long gone are the times of the first receivers where you had several ICs with
dedicated functions and had to shuffle the data around in not so
straightforward ways (the first DTV receivers had dedicated MPEG2 decoder ICs,
I suppose DVD players had a similar architecture, then became integrated with
time). Now modern smartphones decode more complex video streams with much less
energy expenditure)

~~~
crispyambulance
Yeah, the actual core of the device is going to be roughly something like a
chromecast.

Almost certainly no asics, so the cost is going to be dominated by commodity
parts-- displays, audio-visual jacks and then there's the branded plastic
case, graphics, labels.

There's an iFixit teardown of the chromecast here:
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Chromecast+2015+Teardown/501...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Chromecast+2015+Teardown/50189)

Basically, 5 or 6 IC's and related trimmings--- BOM cost? I am going to guess
around $35-- that's what google sells it for. Since they're making money not
on the device itself but rather the online activity that becomes enabled from
using the device, I expect the retail price would be roughly the BOM cost.

A little more money if you're looking at a proper set-top, I guess, though I
haven't actually seen a cable box in a long time. Are they roku-sized now, or
just huge mostly empty boxes?

~~~
cr0sh
> Are they roku-sized now, or just huge mostly empty boxes?

I haven't seen a new one in a while either, but the last time I used one (at a
relative's house IIRC), it was the same-old, same-old:

A box about the size of a DVD player, a bit larger (smaller than a VCR,
though), mostly empty inside. Usually if it's a DVR, there's a hard drive, and
the board is mostly a computer, generally running some kind of embedded
proprietary closed-source RTOS. Occasionally you'll see linux, android, or
some flavor of Windows CE. Beyond that - yeah, empty air.

I know that some of the very simple cable boxes are about the size of a Roku,
but I don't think any of them are like a Chromecast (that is, usb drive size).

------
LanceH
I would really like to buy a box that was sophisticated enough to cache which
channels I have and what is showing on those channels. They all seem to do a
very slow refresh every time I switch between menus.

It's now a distant memory being able to switch between channels instantly. I
should at least be able to page through the menus quickly.

~~~
captainmuon
I always thought about putting multiple tuners in the box, and just decoding
multiple channels simultaneously. Then to switch a channel you would just "put
another window in the front".

You could have a predictive system that would decode the three most likely
next channels and start decoding them. In the best case, this would move the
latency of the first switch close to zero, and of subsequent switches to 1/2
or 1/3.

To save energy, you could get one of these fancy remotes that they have for
telefone conferences, that can detect when you pick it up. Once you lift the
remote, start the extra tuners.

~~~
sjm-lbm
I have a (pretty old) TiVo that lets you do something similar to this -
there's some button on the remote (I honestly can't remember what it is
called) that lets you cycle between the tuners. It works pretty much like you
describe - if a bit more manually - and has the added benefit of not requiring
you to type a multi digit channel number every time you want to hop between
your favorite channels.

~~~
wkearney99
Current models have six live tuners. All running a buffer for whatever channel
is tuned on each. Works fantastically well. There's a "Live TV" button on the
remote than cycles through them, or you can manually poke through a quick
submenu to jump right to one in particular.

------
imagetic
Cancelled my Comcast today. Price creep was the main reason, and it was just
plain expensive for what it was. It was a liberating phone call though. I've
been waiting for years to get out from under their cable/internet combo
madness.

AT&T just brought fiber to my neighborhood last month with a $40/mo 100mb/s
plan. That's 3x cheaper than the > 100mb Comcast plan I was on that required
me to have internet and basic cable.

Both cap at 1TB and AT&T had no gear rental fees and a $10/out of contract
monthly fee after a year. So far the only MAJOR downside is I can't use
1.1.1.1 for my DNS which took awhile to reverse engineer after I broke the
internet...twice. A fix is coming, but I found 6 months of internet forums
saying that.

And I think 5 of my neighbors are about to make the switch too. The Comcast
person on the phone started to make their scripted argument for how they could
reduce my plan. I said $40 and no TV or save the oxygen for the next customer.

In the end, it's probably just equally as evil but it works out far better for
my bills.

------
trelliscoded
I used to work for a set top box middleware vendor, and at the time circa
2005-6 we had internal charge amounts of about a few hundred bucks for the mid
range PVRs at the time. I just looked at a competitive analysis sheet I still
have access to and it look like the total BoM for a modern PVR with all the
bells and whistles like voice recognition and 4k is around $400-600 including
a cheap AV rated drive to store the video.

The lower end ones with cloud PVR look like they're crazy cheap, like a low
end cell phone. I wouldn't be surprised if the IP only ones were $50 in
Q10000. There's a bunch of implementation notes about fiddly expensive analog
calibration for the terrestrial and docsis transceivers, but it looks like the
two major ASIC vendors both ship turnkey calibration systems to help reduce
manufacturing cost. One of them has a nice menu of prevalidated contract
manufacturers that already have production lines ready to go once you sign.

------
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.

------
oconnor663
> 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 lot? These are meaningless big
numbers.

~~~
nickpsecurity
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?

~~~
oconnor663
Yes, comparing the price of a set top box to the price of a Roku sounds much
more reasonable. And I'm sure we could think of a dozen different comparisons
besides. The point is that we should be _making these comparisons_ instead of
dropping gigantic numbers by themselves for effect :p

------
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.

------
myrandomcomment
I have not had cable or satellite since 2008 and I do not miss it. Amazon
prime has tons of free stuff. Have a Netflix account. Have a proxy that lets
me watch things like the BBC (hey BBC, you could make money if you allowed an
online subscription for those not in the UK - I did pay for a TV pieces BTW as
my address is register to a friend in the UK). There is also iTunes for
things. Have Kodi with my local collection of DVDs ripped.

What is missing is a roll up service. I want an application that has a list of
my services and then presents me a uniform search box for all them! That would
rock. Thought about writing one but it would just get shutdown for violation
of the terms of service. Also a Kodi plunging for Amazon, NetFlix and XM would
rock at some point.

~~~
Consultant32452
With regards to a roll up service, this is something I want too. The best
approximation I've seen is the media search on Roku. You can search for a
movie or TV show and it will show you which Roku channels offer that content.
It's of course not as seamless as a real roll up service could be, but I
thought I'd suggest it. On your phone/tablet, you may appreciate the "Just
Watch" app which lets you search the providers you select.

FWIW I used to swear by Roku but then they started randomly adding channels to
my screen. This was basically a paid ad, if you were a service provider you
can pay Roku to force your channel onto the device. Once that started I
chucked all my Roku devices.

~~~
myrandomcomment
Thanks. The “Ads” are the reason I looked at the Roku and then said no. I was
looking at an AppleTV also (I would have to convert some of my videos, but
whatever) however the lack of an optical audio out kills that as I want the
music to go to a different amp. So PC with Kodi and TV apps for Netflix and
Amazon. The quest continues!

~~~
PascLeRasc
Do you need 4K? The 3rd-gen Apple TV has optical audio out but it's 1080p
only. Very nice interface though. If you already have a 4K TV, does it really
not have optical out built-in? My Roku TV has it and it's about as cheap as 4K
TVs get.

~~~
myrandomcomment
So right now I have this -

Compute --> DAC DAC --> TV --> Sound Bar for videos (also TV apps output to
sound bar) DAC --> Tube Amp (for music played from computer) Record Player -->
Tube Amp Tube Amp --> 2 good speakers

Ideal would would be Apple TV with XM, iPlayer, Netflix, Amazon App - HDMI to
4K TV - TV to sound bar Apple TV with Optical to DAC to Tube Amp.

I have looked at some of the HDMI sound extractors but there seems to be
limits on things you can play, having a remote, DRM.

Everything is controlled by Logictech Harmony.

------
BonesJustice
I'm reasonably certain the $231/year figure the author quotes is _not_ the
amount paid for a single set-top box (as he says), but the average total paid
by a household for _all_ their set-top boxes. That averages out to around ~3
boxes per household at rates similar to those quoted in the story, which is
about what I'd expect.

That said, the charges are still a ripoff, and just one of many reasons I do
not miss paying for cable TV.

~~~
treve
The average household has 3 set-top boxes? That sounds like a lot. Even median
would be a lot. Who needs to be able to watch basic cable in 3 rooms in a
house?

~~~
BonesJustice
I think the average number of TVs _used_ per household is something like 2.x a
month. But many households probably have a set top box hooked up to a lesser-
used TV (guest room, rec room, etc.) that they're paying for even when it sits
unused.

My parents are middle-class empty nesters, and IIRC, they have boxes in the
kitchen, living room, home office, and _maybe_ another in the master bedroom?

Clearly they do not 'need' that many, yet they have them. This is just another
way in which the rigid, inflexible model of legacy television generates
excessive revenue: one cannot carry a TV and cable box around the house as
easily as they can a tablet PC or iPad.

------
giarc
Anyone still renting should look to used markets for equipment. With the
number of people cord-cutting, the market for used equipment is quite
saturated.

I own a DVR and 4 or 5 "satellite" type boxes, cut the cord and looked to see
how much I could get from them. Basically wasn't worth my time with hundreds
of people in the same boat as me in my city.

------
tonyb
There is a very big factor that the article missed - license fees.

A good chuck of that fee is goes to licensing. The guide software, guide data,
DVR, VOD, etc. often have per-box licensing fees the provider has to pay.

The $250 also seams low to me. I’ve seen numbers in the $600-$900 range. Cable
STBs are also much more expensive than IPTV devices because they have tunners,
upstream modulators, MOCA (for whole home DVR), switched digital video, etc.
vs a IPTV box that has an Ethernet port and basically just decodes mpeg4
multicast streams. The cost of STBs is one of the reasons MSOs like the idea
of network based DVR.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/nbuUq](http://archive.is/nbuUq)

------
x3n0ph3n3
Am I the only one here who still torrents all of their TV?

~~~
soylentcola
Even when I had cable I would use Popcorn Time behind a VPN for TV shows. No
messing with DVR that may or may not actually record the show. Nice Netflix-
style list of available programs and the ability to bookmark favorites and see
if there were any new episodes.

I'm sure if I had felt like setting it up, usenet automation + Plex server
would have been even better but this was simple enough.

Again, I _had_ cable and I _had_ a cable box but it was that much easier to
watch streaming torrents that I still watched unlicensed recordings like that.

Basically, if you are going to charge me a monthly fee to borrow some set top
box, you need to make the set top box worth the expense. My only "legit"
option was something that looked like a 1998 leftover that barely worked,
worked slowly, and cost me almost $10/month to borrow. If I wanted one of the
nicer boxes, I had to sign up for unrelated services like some "triple play"
with phone service included. Not happening.

------
Ziomislaw
Site not avaliable in EU. First one I've seen

------
rubatuga
The ISP box in my home has a SFP cage, and fiber sfp adapter, with wireless ac
and a nice OLED screen. Total cost is $130, but everybody gets a free rental.

~~~
shawnz
Does it have video output though? We have a similar device as our modem (with
Bell Canada) but still need set-top boxes at each TV in addition to the modem.
The modem is given on a free rental, but the set-top boxes are not.

------
shapiro92
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.

~~~
MatthewWilkes
This article should be switched to an alternative that doesn't have
restrictive geofilters or removed.

~~~
dionidium
There's an assumption in this statement that doesn't survive scrutiny. This is
_original_ reporting. What makes you think there's an equivalent alternative?
†

† _This perception is obviously a huge problem for papers like the L.A. Times
(and for writers, in general). For better or worse, this is how people see it,
now. If you don 't like the source, then you just imagine substituting in
another one, like you're buying pork futures (or whatever the opposite of
original reporting is)._

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The assumption may be that any worthwhile article will immediately be
"reported on" (restated with no new information) by a dozen other sites.

Edit: I'm not saying that's a _good_ thing, guys. I agree with dionidium.

~~~
dionidium
Right, exactly, which is to trivialize original reporting beyond the dictates
of fairness. An original piece of reporting and the blog post that summarizes
it _are not equivalent content_.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Indeed. Just to be clear, I agree with you; I only meant to clearly state the
OP's faulty assumption.

