Cable Revamp

Mr. and I are kind of slow to the draw when it comes to updating our television accouterments.  This is surprising only because we love TV and one would think we would be on top of TV technology.

Around a year ago, I took a hard look at our cable bill and realized we were being charged:

-          $7 to rent a modem
-          $9 for our bedroom and guestroom cable boxes each

My first step was to stop renting the modem.  I went to Amazon and did some pricing comparisons.  I found the same one as ours and in January bought it for a total of $36.95  For non-math people, that is the equivalent of renting our modem for 5-6 months.   We have had our current modem for 4 years.  This means we have spent a total of $336 renting it.

We received the new modem and for eight months, the little guy sat in a box on our filing cabinet.  Finally a week ago this past Saturday, I decided to switch them out.  (Note that we spent another $56 while this was sitting there.  Note also that I looked up when we had ordered this to write this blog and was horrified we had it for so many months and just had it sit there.  Oops.  2012 is flying.  That is my excuse.)

The switch out took all of about 5 minutes. 

On top of this, as I mentioned, we were paying $18 for our two bedroom cable boxes.  Since we rarely have guests, I told Mr. we should just turn that one in and get HD because the cost of upgrading to HD was about $9/ month (making it a wash).

I have had one of these cables boxes since October 2001.

Let’s keep on with the math.  I majored in it so it is putting college degree to good use.  I don’t know what the rental charge was for said box back in 2001 but we’ll go with an average of $7 a month over the past 11 years to rent this box. 

11x12x7=$924

Yes, folks, I have paid $924 (approx.) over 11 years for the joy of watching TV on this one box.  I think honestly we should be given a box at this point.  That is a lot of money.  Rip OFF!!!

Anyways, back on point….

This Saturday we decided to go to the cable place and return these two boxes and modem and pick up an HD box.

I don’t understand why a cable place would only be open 9-1 on Saturdays and not on Sundays even if they are open all week.   Needless to say, it was crowded.  I actually did pretty well considering and didn’t complain once.  This is a record.  But, besides the Social Security office, this may be the worst place to wait in a line.

We finally got to the front, explained to the guy what we needed and gave him our old equipment. 

Guy: “This isn’t ours” (as he holds up the channel changer)
Me: “Yes it is”
Him: “No, it isn’t”
Me: “Yes, it is.   It goes with the cable box.”
Him to a co-worker: “Is this ours?”
Her: “Yes”

It is nice to know our equipment is so ancient, the workers don’t even recognize it.  In his defense, when we moved into our house, the cable install guy laughed at our remote and gave us an updated one.  They should really send you a letter at some point to come and exchange your stuff for updates.

So anyways, we got our HD box, were told by the cable guy that we could trade in our remaining cable box we had left at home for an HD box at no cost (this was done on purpose on the off-chance there was some issue with the HD one, I didn’t want to have no TV.  THE HORROR!!!!), and headed home.

An install later and OMG.  I had seen HD before (who hasn’t?) but this has greatly improved my time on the couch.   We should have done this ages ago.  My Good Witch marathon on Saturday was fab!!!!

The only drawback: There is no clock on new guy.  Sigh…  It is driving us mad so we have to go get one for our family room.

To close out, let’s compare the two boxes:

We don’t really needed HD for our bedroom TV but since it not adding any cost and the box is so much smaller, we will be heading to the cable place to exchange when we get around to it…  Probably in 5 or 6 years....