And how much do you pay for it every month in rent?
The bottom line of this article is that nobody is telling about the cost. Every other item of electronics has the price going down. Why not a simple cable box?
If the FCC was right about the average customer paying $231 a year (as of 2016), that suggests the typical pay-TV company is recouping its investment per box in about a year or less, and all fees paid beyond that point are pure gravy, even allowing for any maintenance expenses.
Each analyst I spoke with said box fees aren’t a huge source of revenue for pay-TV companies, but they obviously add up.
Charter, for example, still has more than 16-million residential customers with set-top boxes, many with multiple boxes.
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.
Rival Comcast charges $9.95 monthly for a high-definition box. It has about 22-million TV subscribers. It’s thus looking at potential revenue of $2.6 billion annually.
Yeah, if I ran a pay-TV company, I’d want to keep that to myself as well.
After all that, the author comes up with this:
But the general consensus was that Arris sells basic boxes to pay-TV companies for about $150 apiece and more advanced boxes for closer to $250.
So, figure it out for yourselves.
Full article with a lot of stonewalling @ How much does a cable box really cost? The industry would prefer you don't ask - Los Angeles Times
