Time Warner Cable Box Rental Inspired Antitrust Lawsuit 291
EmagGeek writes "Matthey Meeds, a real-estate agent, was so irritated about having to pay the monthly rental fee that on Tuesday he filed an antitrust suit against Time Warner Cable and its 84 percent owner, Time Warner Inc. The suit alleges that, by linking the provision of premium cable services to rental of the cable box, the companies have established illegal tying arrangements. 'Time Warner's improper tying and bundling harms competition,' Meeds' lawsuit states. 'Since the class can only rent the cable box directly from Time Warner, manufacturers of cable boxes are foreclosed from renting and/or selling cable boxes directly to members of the class at a lower cost.' I pay Comcast over $25/mo for my two DVRs. I'd love to just be able to buy them or build my own. I can't wait to see how this unfolds."
Better solutions are out there.. (Score:1, Informative)
Tivo and Vista Media Center both offer cablecard solutions. These bypass the need for cable boxes for most users. And before you start, there are solutions for switched video coming as well.
This will all be supplanted by VOD over the Interweb.
Bringing the lawyers in is really weak. Enjoy your 3 months of free DVR rental as part of your settlement offer.
I hope for the best (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bandwagon (Score:5, Informative)
For a while Verizon Fios was giving out free Digital adapter boxes if you went to a service station and asked (no purchase or rental). They're really cheap-quality boxes, about the size of a CD wallet and don't have a TV Guide or VoD server. They just allow for manual entry of channels via a remote (which is what most people really need anyway).
But they can watch all non-HD channels that you subscribe to, all the way up through the 1000's.
I think they charge for them now as a purchase (not a rental). So you might want to ask about it.
Re:What's more disturbing to me... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Choice is there, he just doesn't like it. (Score:3, Informative)
From what I've seen of the comments on this article, people are confused about the nature of Time Warner's services. Time Warner does not give a simple DVR, in fact, the machine they give you is not technically a DVR at all, from what I can tell. Time Warner provides a thin client network, with customer "on demand" requests processed on their systems. As far as I can tell, if the cable box has any on board storage, it only stores the ID of a program and the position where the user left off. I could be wrong, but I couldn't locate any sort of hard drive in that cable box, and I doubt that it could have enough flash storage for the number of shows people "record."
As for competition...until very recently, the only legitimate competition Time Warner had was satellite, and it was clean that cable was winning that battle, at least in urban areas. Since Time Warner is basically the only cable provider in most of New York City, and since they only provide ONE set top box, this lawsuit may have some credence. I personally doubt it, since the cable box is really just an access mechanism to Time Warner's services, and there is nothing stopping someone from picking up a DVR and connecting it to that cable box (much like one would do with a VCR). Or maybe there is yet another angle to this lawsuit.
Re:As an Ex cable industry insider.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As an Ex cable industry insider.... (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, I'm pretty sure we aren't on the gold standard any longer so what relevance does the price of gold have to do with anything? Somehow I think if we had 300% inflation in the last nine years that it would be a story..... according to this [westegg.com] $20 in 1998 was worth $25.75 in 2007.
Re:Better solutions are out there.. (Score:2, Informative)
Yup. The big beef is that the manufacturer serial number is a rendom length value too. Plus the billing system was only designed to accept either moto or SA valid serial numbers. So it has to be re-educated to take a device ID(cablecard) and a host ID (the random number of digits and type of characters manufacturer's serial number) for billing instead of just a fixed length serial number.
Using the account number is a bad idea. Especially when some boxes are provisioned to NOT get HD or HD on demand, or porn, etc. Each box is linked to a "socket" on the account. A socket can contain any addressable item. Like a DOCSIS modem, a STB, or an eMTA device. Fuck, even an addressable tap in some places (no truck rolls to change analog service status/level).
At least you don't have Dish (Score:3, Informative)
Paid $300 up front for my DVR, then the setup fee, then the activation fee, then I still have to pay a fee each month for the rental of the box (their excuse is that its a $700 box and I got it at a discount), then I have to pay for the DVR service. Then I paid the $40 one time fee to activate the USB port so that I could use MY external HD, which they cut access to if I am just one day late on my bill.
Re:Better solutions are out there.. (Score:3, Informative)
Tivos do not necessarily have a monthly cost for listings. Lifetime service (tied to the box) has returned for all. You have to decide whether the 'gamble' is worth it to you, but generally the thing to go wrong on a Tivo is the hard drive. (Even if it is not, you can usually pay a certain fee to Tivo to get a new box and have the lifetime transferred. That refers to the case of a broken Tivo. What you can't do is just go buy a new Tivo and expect to transfer the lifetime service -- with rare exceptions like the 'grandfathered' exception for lifetime subscriptions from before mid-2000, and a few reduced-cost lifetime transfer options that have happened in the past..)
I realize that's longwinded... but I'm a huge fan of Tivo, but would not pay monthly at the current rate. I 'gamble' that the lifetime will be worth it, and it certainly was for my S1s.. My S3 & TivoHD have now been going for a while now..