Video Asylum

Posted by DavidLD (A) on July 24, 2013 at 17:54:27

In Reply to: RE: Not so sure anymore posted by jedrider on July 22, 2013 at 16:09:14

Cable boxes are the checked baggage of the Cable industry. The monthly rentals generate a lot of the revenue and MOST of the profits of a typical cable company. The more they can get you to pay a monthly charge for the better.

There is a move on the part of cable companies to remove all unscrambled channels from the raw cable, thus requiring everyone to rent a box no matter what. They got Congress to go along with the consumer scam by spending billions on lobbying.


The publis is only now discovering that they can get excellent HDTV signals with nothing more than simple rabbit ears. Supplement that with a low cost Netflix or Hulu subscription, and people are cutting their cable services right and left.

THe cable industry is rapidly losing out to other sources that are cheaper and offer HD pictures without the rental box costs and hassle. THe box rentals to a certain degree have kept the revenue stream going as more and more people discover they can live without basic cable. The cable industry fails to realize it, but even now they are on the verge of being obsolute. Stay tuned. It will get messier before it is all over.
The changes are just starting. THe cable industry and their set top boxes is much like the phone industry of 50 years ago. Remember when the only place you could get a telephone was from the phone company and you had to pay an extra $2 a month to get the phone. Of course you couldn't use your phone line without one of the phone company telephones and paying the rent.