With the money you spend renting your cable box every year, you could buy a new TV.
On average, Americans pay $231 a year to use their TV providers’ set-top boxes, according to a Senate study. If you break that down, it adds up to 65 lattes from Starbucks or a 32-inch LED TV from Samsung.
The finding isn’t likely to sit well with consumers who already think their cable or satellite-service companies are charging them too much. And for Sens. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that’s the point: They’re incensed by what they say is a lack of choice in the market for set-top boxes, with 99 percent of pay-TV subscribers renting their boxes from companies such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV.
The lawmakers surveyed 10 companies including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to find out how much each charges to lease its boxes. The average across the industry for a set-top box was $7.43 a month. With the average American household using 2.6 boxes (some companies require one box per TV, Markey’s office said), that adds up to more than $230 a year.
In a statement, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said there’s plenty of choice in the market: “In today’s competitive video marketplace, American consumers have a growing number of choices of video providers and ways to access video content on multiple devices in and out of the home. Retail devices including TiVo, Roku and Apple TV have been purchased by tens of millions of consumers.”
Picking a third-party box can sometimes be pretty pricey, too: A basic TiVo unit will set you back $200 and requires a separate subscription that costs up to $150 a year.
Some in the industry, such as Time Warner Cable, are exploring ways to let consumers connect their own set-top boxes. On an investor call Thursday, company officials said they even expect such policies to save them money. Not having to provide set-top boxes to customers would allow Time Warner Cable to cut costs in the long run.
But that’s likely to be a years-long process. And until then, most of us will probably keep renting our boxes — to the tune of hundreds of dollars every year.
