Electronics

[ID2]

We have Charter cable at our cottage. Right after we moved into our new cottage last winter they changed their policy. Now it is all digital. That means you have to have a cable box for every tv in your house. All the tv's we installed were wall mounted. Before, we were able to view cable just by having a cable ready tv. There's no way I'm going to have a cable box hooked up to each of our wall mounted tvs! Where do we put the box? How do I hide the hideous wires? Horrible! We just called and cancelled our cable, just kept internet. We'll now just watch what we want on our smart tvs.

[Mz iMac]

You can negotiate w/both Comcast & Verizon FIOS. Especially if you are a SS & getting their package ""deals."" They will waive the fee for the cable boxes.

It does help to be a customer in good standing.

[Nuttmeg]

On 9/18/2014 ID2 said:

We have Charter cable at our cottage. Right after we moved into our new cottage last winter they changed their policy. Now it is all digital. That means you have to have a cable box for every tv in your house. All the tv's we installed were wall mounted. Before, we were able to view cable just by having a cable ready tv. There's no way I'm going to have a cable box hooked up to each of our wall mounted tvs! Where do we put the box? How do I hide the hideous wires? Horrible! We just called and cancelled our cable, just kept internet. We'll now just watch what we want on our smart tvs.

It is sad, but the programming you will be able to watch is limited. Most everything you watch online requires cable TV service.

[kittymomNC]

Time Warner Cable will offer a "special rate" for bundles, but they don't tell you up front that it doesn't include taxes and fees of $12.00+ or fees for certain pieces of equipment. I have their triple play, digital phone, basic and standard digital TV, and Internet service. They go up on the "promotional rate" every year, sometimes a considerable amount. The first time mine went from $90.00+ to $150.00 a month. I called and threatened to get rid of everything, so they gave me a promotional rate of about $111.00. Then it went up again, and I called, and they came down to $124.00. Now this year, it went up again to $147.00, and I could only get them back down to $141.00. I pay for cable TV and Internet at another house, which went from $85.00 to $121.00 and I "negotiated" back down to $94.00.

They've added fees, and started charging for things they never charged for before. I've only got one box, but I have TV hookups in other rooms. I can't get the "digital tier" channels in the other rooms, which is no big deal, and I don't have DVR.

It gets to be a royal pain in the neck -- but we have no competitive cable companies in our area, so they can do whatever they want. Unless we wanted to go to satellite.....

[Mom2Dogs]

We pay around $80.00 for cable only at our house. We have two boxes and they are $10 each. Right now we are getting 2 boxes for the price of 1 but when that special is over we will get rid of one of the boxes. The 2nd box is in the master and we really don't need it there, even if we are watching something generally we fall asleep so we really don't need it.

[Gidge]

We live near Buffalo, NY and have Verizon . For Fios, Internet and landline phones, we pay $165/mo . (No movie channels). I hate that I have to pay for each tv we have and need a box!

[Kay SD]

The Uverse deal looks like one of the best. I pay $10 for my box; I could tale it out and still have basic channels, but no access to HD programming.

[151949]

When we lived in Pittsburgh we had Verizon FIOS for phone, cable TV and internet. Now in Fl we have comcast. I can tell you absolutely that the Verizon FIOS was much superior over Comcast. However, it was also more expensive. You do get what you pay for. If we could get our cable TV from Verizon now we would but it isn't an option for us where we live now as the HOA pays the cable.

[chickenbutt]

We do. It's $6.99 for each box and $2 for each cablecard. We have 3 boxes and 2 cablecards.

But it's not too bad. For now I have it down to $118 a month for all that, including all the channels including all of the premium channels.

One nice thing is that it went all HD this year, so you don't have to pay extra for an HD cable box. If you have the right equipment and HDMI cables you just use that. If you don't (like you have old CRT TVs, etc) you just use the a/v cables. I like that. The cablecards were all HD when I first got them over two years ago.

[smoky22]

On 9/1/2014 Pinkroses said: I have charter tv, internet, phone. 3 HD boxes. $220 a month!

This is exactly what we have (3 HD DVR's that include all the premium channels).

We have one tv in the guest bedroom without a cable box. We've been told that come Oct 14th Charter in our area is going all digital and we will need a cable box for the additional tv. They are sending it to us free for a year and then it will go up to the standard cost of 6.99 per hd cable box.

I'm going to see if I can get anything on that TV after the 14th before hooking up the cable box. Since we hardly ever have guests, I'm hoping we will still be able to get something very basic on that TV without the cable box. I'll keep the box for a year but I really can't justify paying for an unused cable box after that.