Charter cable... anyone having to pay for new boxes?

lydia1959

10 years ago

The days of sticking the cable directly into the back of the old TV will soon come to an end for Charter CommunicationsÃ¯Â¿Â½ customers in the St. Louis area.

The company is converting to an all-digital system and eliminating "analog" cable TV service. People who donÃ¯Â¿Â½t already have a set-top digital cable box, or a cable card system, for each TV will have to get one to continue getting Charter pay TV.

I just got the letter in the mail today. I don't mind paying for one box, but I have 2 other TV's that are rarely used (1 is in the basement and the other is a tiny TV in the bedroom). We seriously use each of the rarely used TVs maybe a average of twice a month... not really worth a extra $14. a month. The main TV gets used an average of about 3 hours per day. My DH rarely watches TV at all and we don't have kids at home. I've always thought cable was high anyway and now it is even worse. Right now we pay $79. a month for expanded basic.

Is anyone else dealing with this Charter change? Guess there's no way out of the extra charges if I want to use the extra TV's. :( My only other choices are Dish or DirectV.

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Comments (7)

redcurls
10 years ago
We have something similar in our condo. Instead of paying an additional $14.99 a month for the box, we just attached a Roku to the bedroom TV and use it to watch things via HULU (not HULU plus which costs) and Netflix which we already subscribe to (8 a month). I think a Chromecast would be great in your case, since it just plugs in like a thumb drive. If you don't watch either of those sets simultaneously, it's even feasible to move the device to the set being used.
Terri_PacNW
10 years ago
I have comcast..we have "channel" boxes on 2 tv's and a small "basic" channel "box" for the other tv.. They said there was no charge for the one that allows basic..but with as much as I pay Comcast a month..I'm not so sure..
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ravencajun Zone 8b TX
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Yes absolutely we have to pay for each box we have with direct TV. It has always been that way. I don't know of any current digital companies that aren't that way. You pay for every TV their equipment is attached to.
You are lucky if you have gone this long with only paying one fee.
kris_zone6
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Charter is providing us with two boxes for free for 2 years and then we will have to pay a monthly fee. If we had more boxes, we would have to pay for them each month.
3katz4me
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These are the kind of things that caused me to dump cable entirely. Didn't like the fee for the boxes but worse was the need for two remote controls.
lydia1959
Original Author
10 years ago
We'll get 2 boxes free for one year. I think we've decided to keep the main TV and the basement TV and just get a DVD player for the small TV and not have it connected to cable at all.

Raven... the Charter tech that installed our cable hooked up the splitter for us so we could have multiple TVs. That seemed to be common practice in the area I live in. I'm sure that wasn't Charter policy though. When we had DirecTV (for over 16 years) we had our secondary TV's on an antenna which now no longer works.

Redcurls, I have looked a little into the Chromecast.. will have to do some more research on that. Thanks.
Elmer J Fudd
10 years ago
"but worse was the need for two remote controls"

Most TV system set top box remotes (whether cable or satellite) can be easily set to trigger the frequently used controls of your TV - on/off, volume, etc. They usually come with instructions to do that, if your settop box isn't installed by a technician. Normally you can set that up, put your TV remote aside, and just use the one handset that came with the box.

Charter cable... anyone having to pay for new boxes?

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