reciever monthly fee

[quest2001]

I am just wondering but how come you can own your own box with the cable company and not pay a monthly fee, but with the satellite company you own your box and you still have to pay a monthly fee?

 

[navychop]

It's for extra boxes. Cablecos charge for extra boxes, too.

 

[Stargazer]

But what quest2001 is saying is that if you own your own cable boxes you do not get charged an additional outlet fee. The only fee that the cable companies are charging are for leasing the additional receivers where the satellite companies charge a $4.99 for each additional receiver you have on the account whether you are leasing it or owning it. The cable company would have the advantage since you would pay the same or slightly more and not have to pay for the box or if you did buy the box you save the additional outlet fee.

The thing is, the cable boxes tend to be a bit more expensive than the satellite receivers. Also Dish Network has the dual tuners so sometimes satellite has the advantage in that way. Another thing is you can split the cable line and still get the analog stations but you cannot do that with satellite unless you want to watch the same thing in the rooms you split them off to.

 

[SatinKzo]

Didn't know you could actually own your own cable STB. I have never seen one of the ones the cable companies use for sale to the general public and if you get one, they won't authorize it. What cable STB's do you guys have? What cable company?

I am not talking about a cablecard either.

 

[Jordan420]

Because they can
So they can get $5 more dollars a box from customers
Just because one company has no fee it doesn't mean all companys should have no fee.

 

[gdarwin]

Didn't know you could actually own your own cable STB. I have never seen one of the ones the cable companies use for sale to the general public and if you get one, they won't authorize it. What cable STB's do you guys have? What cable company?

I am not talking about a cablecard either.

I know our cable (Insight) will not allow you to own your boxes... That is one of the main reasons I went with Dish. When I bought my HD TV my cable bill was going to hit $200.00 because I had to rent a HD box from them.

 

[kb7oeb]

I know Cox will sell you one, not sure on the current price but if you wanted HD cable a couple years ago you had to buy a $500 hd cable box. No monthly fees for it as far as I know.

I read somewhere, don't know if its true, that a significant share of the $5 fee goes to the access card manufacturer.

 

[SatinKzo]

I am surprised you can buy the cable box. I always found it somewhat wrong that you could not buy a cable STB from most cable companies. You can buy your own cable modem, why not the stb? You Cox cable is the first I have ever heard of that allows the customer to own the stb. I have dealt with Comcast, Charter and cablevision, not one will let you buy one.

Does cox still charge a monthly fee if you own it?

 

[Stargazer]

For as much as they want for some of the cable boxes it would not be worth purchasing them. I would think that the cable companies are getting a deal on them since they purchase them in bulk and keep the prices of them high to make a profit if a customer damages one and to make more money by making people want to lease them instead.

 

[Van]

I'd bet he is talking about the ones you buy out the back of some magazines or on ebay that only go to channel 125.

 

[SatinKzo]

Well, If that's the case, I would get an LG4200A. They are legal as they only do QAM in the clear (locals and some other stuff) on cable. I get all my locals in HD and some random digital programming from lifeline cable now, as it does QAM and goes to channels 135. It also has an NTSC and ATSC tuner. Very nice once box solution and no cable switching like other models and no channel rescans to get NTSC or QAM digital. I had the samsung t451 but it has problems with QAM 256 and 2 of my HD locals are in that format so I could not receive them on the samsung