[FoRK] tvland

Gregory Alan Bolcer greg at bolcer.org
Fri Jan 20 18:06:08 PST 2017

Set top boxes are specialty one-off, securely provisioned pieces of 
technology with moving pieces (hard drives) and crypto that nobody knows 
why they have to pay for it. TVs are commodities, mass produced, and 
easily replaceable that people want and want to use.

Why do we even have set top boxes anyways?


On 1/20/2017 6:02 PM, Bill Kearney wrote:
>> TVs used to be expensive.  Now they are often less than you pay the cable
>> company.  That puts them in the range where they could be provided.
> The sets themselves might be relatively inexpensive but the support costs
> would be a lot more than  a set top box.
> You've seen how they handle those, right?  Damn near just tossed into the
> back of the truck.  That and the square footage required for TVs would be
> quite a lot more.  Both for delivery and then for support, turn-around and
> eventual shipping back/forth for service.
> I don't see a cable operator likely wanting to take on all those added
> costs, at least not compared to handling set top boxes.
> -Bill Kearney
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