Price for Cable & Satellite services

[barnabas1969]

[Split and edited from: Your thoughts on The FCC http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =22&t=4301 due to the direction the thread took.]
[barnabas, you have magically started this thread ]




How much do you pay for cable TV service each month? Does that price include any other services like Internet? If so, please list them too. I'd like to compare your monthly cable bill is when compared to mine.

For example, I pay about $150 (USD) per month for the following:

• Digital Cable, including 131 HD channels
• 46 music channels (Music Choice)
• Approximately 150 non-HD channels that are a mix of mostly digital and some analog (there are many channels that are duplicated between analog/SD/HD, but I'm only including unique channels, with a preference for HD, in my counts)
• Two CableCARD's ($2.99/month each, plus 6% sales tax)
• A subscription to Showtime ($15.00/month, plus unknown taxes, for nine premium channels which are not included in the Digital Cable package)
• Internet service with no monthly caps. Download/upload speed is 20/2 (with downstream bursts up to 30Mbps for a short duration).
• Cable modem rental ($2.00 per month)
• federal, state, and local taxes

I almost never watch the non-HD channels. There is no need to... everything I want to watch is included in the HD channels. I also get 40+ channels over-the-air. About 25 of those are mapped to channels in my guide (the other 15 are crap that I would never watch, and so I removed them from my guide). Of the 25 OTA channels that are mapped in my guide, 13 are also carried by my cable company (and my OTA tuners are the highest priority for them).

EDIT: My employer reimburses me $43.99/month for Internet service. But the $150 includes everything, even the part that my employer reimburses.

[STC]

We pay about $190. It includes phone and reasonably slow Internet: 10/1.
Mostly SD with about 50 HD (I watch about 50/50 SD/HD). A group of three HD movie channels, a couple of sports, and the rest the garbage that is thrown into the packages.

We pay 13% tax on that also :/

[jziggity]

CableCARD was originally intended so that we could buy a TV with a CableCARD slot (or an STB at retail instead of leasing one from the cable provider). Unfortunately, very few TV's were ever produced with a CableCARD slot... which was disappointing for people who wanted access to their digital cable subscription without an STB.

I still have a Panasonic 42" plasma with a cablecard slot in the back. I believe it will only take an S-stream card though. I actually had a cablecard in the TV for a little while too, but that was a handful of years ago. It worked as it should. It was one of the selling points on that particular set, for me. I abhor cable company provided STB's. It also has the built-in TV Guide service. Anyone remember that? It was pretty high-speed for its day. Waaay back in the day (circa 2000) I had a 27" tube TV that had the TV Guide service with an IR blaster that attached to my VCR, so I could search the grid guide and make recording selections from there. I thought that was the coolest thing, and it worked really well!

<rant> I don't understand why a cable company (*cough* TWC *cough* *cough*) has money to fly a plane over the freeway pulling an advertising banner, but can't 1. hire more CSR's so the average wait time is less than 15 minutes, and 2. spend a minimal amount of R&D dollars to make even a half-way decent DVR. </rant>

[LuckyDay]

You guys pay a TON for cable. Wow.

[bobbob]

ha! my Sky (UK) bill, including full fat satellite package, 40Mb fibre optic and home phone is over an equivalent of $250 a month

[staknhalo]

'Expanded Basic' cable (Broadcast Networks in HD + 70 cable channels in QAM SD) is $45 a month and bottom tier internet (8 down 1 up) $50. The price of the cable I don't really care about; but the price of my internet pisses me off. Comcast offered to buy my cable company some years ago but they refused and have a deal with the city council to have them be the only cable provider/ISP in town :\ My only other option for internet is AT&T DSL. I tried it for 6 months 2 years ago and the stability was abysmal. Advertised as 6 down, I'd be lucky if I got 3.5. So I'm stuck with the shiniest turd in the bucket I had Comcast when I lived not far from where I am currently, and for $5 more a month I got triple the down speed. So I know what I'm missing.

[Crash2009]

the shiniest turd in the bucket

Thanks for the morning chuckle.

[NWW]

Holy crap!

50 euros for 30/4 unlimited (can get 120/4 for 10 euros more) with unlimited calls in europe landlines + 2000 minutes to cellphones after 5pm. No cable. I get all my channels OTA, and satellite from the neighbouring countries (Belgium has almost no local channels, cable only gets french, german and English channels from satellite and it costs 10 euros more) either FTA or with viewing cards that you have to pay once.

And here I thought I payed to much!

[drtdiver]

I've got Comcast and I'm paying $140 a month for Internet and TV. Ive got digital starter package not sure about the number of channels but never watch anything in SD. My internet is 30 down 6 up. But I almost always pull 40 down and about 7 up.

[barnabas1969]

50 euros for 30/4 unlimited (can get 120/4 for 10 euros more) with unlimited calls in europe landlines + 2000 minutes to cellphones after 5pm.

It's interesting that you mention that you have a limit on calls to cell phones from your home phone. I just recently discovered that my wife's family in Romania has a similar home phone plan, where they have limits applied to calls to cell phones.

That seems strange to me, because in the US, a call from a home phone to a cell phone (or vice versa) is treated the same as any other call. Every home phone service I've ever seen in the US has unlimited local calls (including local cell phones). We had unlimited local calls even when I was a child (before cell phones existed).

Now, many plans have unlimited (or thousands) of long-distance minutes included, usually to any phone in the US or Canada. My cable company has phone service. It would add about $15 to my cable bill, and would give me unlimited calls to any phone in the US or Canada.

[barnabas1969]

For an additional $15, I could get 50/5 internet service. But I think 20/2 is sufficient.

Also, for another additional $15, I could get the 3-pack (total of $30 for the 3-pack) of premium channels (HBO, Showtime, Cinemax). I pay $15 now for Showtime alone... and I only got it for "Dexter". But... then I got hooked on a couple of other shows on Showtime. There's nothing on HBO or Skin-e-max that I care about.

[leroys1000]

Basic cable is included in the rent here.
Music choice is not encrypted on the cable one system,so I get
all the music channels on my basic qam tuner.
It cost me $50 a month for 5M/512K internet on cable one.
Only good thing is,I got in on a deal a few years back for unlimited
bandwidth for the life of the account.
Other standard users can get hit with overage charges if they go over
3 GB per day for half the days in a billing cycle.
Not too hard to do if you watch a lot of internet videos.
Might want to check the terms of your internet contract to see if
there are overage charges.
They can be hefty.
I remember seeing something about a few ISP's that were implementing that.

[barnabas1969]

I'd be screwed if my Internet service had caps. I work from home. I'm connected to my company's VPN server for at least 8 hours a day. I don't even know how much data I'm moving back and forth.

[mark1234]

50 euros for 30/4 unlimited (can get 120/4 for 10 euros more) with unlimited calls in europe landlines + 2000 minutes to cellphones after 5pm.

It's interesting that you mention that you have a limit on calls to cell phones from your home phone. I just recently discovered that my wife's family in Romania has a similar home phone plan, where they have limits applied to calls to cell phones.

That seems strange to me, because in the US, a call from a home phone to a cell phone (or vice versa) is treated the same as any other call. Every home phone service I've ever seen in the US has unlimited local calls (including local cell phones). We had unlimited local calls even when I was a child (before cell phones existed).

I believe in the US when you call a mobile phone from a landline you (the caller) pay the same price as calling a landline, and the receiver picks up the extra cost coming from calling a mobile. I don't know about Belgium, but it could be the same as in the UK, where the receiver pays nothing to receive a call, the caller pays the extra for calling a mobile.

From Virgin Media I have "unlimited" (except it isn't) landline calls to UK landlines and Virgin Mobile phones, but pay through the nose for calls to other mobile networks. This is why I only use my mobile to call other mobiles as I get mobile-mobile minutes in my contract.

Just to join in, I also have 60/6 broadband and more TV channels than I'll ever watch. It's about £65/$100US, but I'm on a retentions discount so it's not a price/deal that you can sign up for.

[mark1234]

Other standard users can get hit with overage charges if they go over
3 GB per day for half the days in a billing cycle.

Ouch, ouch, OUCH!

I'd struggle to be below 3Gb per day!

[NWW]

The calling to cellphone is new, it started a couple of months back.

Here, a call to a landline (from a landline) is free (or next to nothing). Even to another country (after hours). The receiver of the call doesn't pay a thing.
A call to a cellphone (inside the country) is more expensive. If the cellphone is in another country (says a Belgian number is abroad), you still pay the same, but the receiver pays as well.
A call to a cellphone outside Belgium... well, let's just say that if I ever do that, I'm screwed.

[richard1980]

To rub it in, I currently pay $38.23 for TV service with Cox....that included my CableCARD, about 25 of the "good" channels from the expanded tier, and a few movie channels (mostly Encore). This is not a promo rate.

[barnabas1969]

I believe in the US when you call a mobile phone from a landline you (the caller) pay the same price as calling a landline, and the receiver picks up the extra cost coming from calling a mobile.

That is correct. The cellular subscriber uses his/her own minutes when he/she answers the phone. Most cellular contracts these days have unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes included. Mine even includes unlimited mobile-to-mobile, regardless whether the person I call has the same mobile phone company as I have or not. It's called unlimited "mobile-to-ANY-mobile".

[barnabas1969]

To rub it in, I currently pay $38.23 for TV service with Cox....that included my CableCARD, about 25 of the "good" channels from the expanded tier, and a few movie channels (mostly Encore). This is not a promo rate.

Wow. How did you get that deal? Does that include HD?

[richard1980]

To rub it in, I currently pay $38.23 for TV service with Cox....that included my CableCARD, about 25 of the "good" channels from the expanded tier, and a few movie channels (mostly Encore). This is not a promo rate.

Wow. How did you get that deal? Does that include HD?

That's just one of the plans Cox has. They call it Cox Economy. It includes a limited selection of channels, but fortunately the included channels closely match my viewing habits anyway. I had to sacrifice a few channels, but nothing that I routinely watched. And yes, it includes HD.