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Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices - Chris Lanier's Blog

Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

It was sure fun while it lasted, but Dell’s special purchasing deal with ATI/AMD on the Digital Cable Tuners appears to have ended.

When the XPS 420 first launched four months ago, Dell was pushing out the tuners for only $180/each.  This was an amazing savings over most other OEMs who were selling them for $300/each.

Now if you want CableCARD with your Dell XPS 420 it will now cost you $255 for a single Digital Cable Tuner or $491 for dual Digital Cable Tuners.  These prices include your standard Media Center remote/receiver combo as well.

Update:

Dell Drops Prices on CableCARD Tuners

Published Thursday, April 10, 2008 3:18 PM by chrisl
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Comments

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

I can't understand why it's so expensive to buy CableCard tuners.  At $491 (without the computer) it's still nearly $200 more than a dual tuner TiVoHD.  Is Dell raising the price because there isn't a lot of demand and they have to recover cablelab's expense or does an HD tuner actually cost that much to manufacture?  Either way, this can't be good for those of us who don't want to deal with cable's lousy set top boxes.  The whole cable card mandate was suppose to open the market to new competition, but at these prices its nothing but a joke.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 3:56 PM by Davis Freeberg

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

This is good news! ...For Hauppauge and their HD-PVR device.

Here's hoping that Dell/ATI (and CableLabs) price themselves out of the market, leaving the door wide open for more sensible (and usable) devices like the Hauppauge HD-PVR.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:09 PM by CoupleOfPoints

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

I believe the issue is more on ATI/AMD's side, not Dell.  ATI did significant R&D to develop these tuners, and it costs a significant amount for them to get them certified.

Not only that, they also function as ATSC tuners and have onboard (hardware encoding, I believe) NTSC tuner as well.  In reality, it's three tuners in one package.  Figure $100/"tuner", there is $300 right there.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:11 PM by chrisl

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

But Tivo had plenty of R&D costs as well, and they include two of these CableCARD tuners in their TivoHD, and they sell it for about the price of one ATI tuner!

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:30 PM by Alfred

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

"Figure $100/'tuner'"

Sorry Chris, a Hauppauge HVR-1600/1800 has 2 tuners, ATSC and NTSC (with hardware encoding) and costs < $100 (that's less than $50 per tuner).

So, for the Dell/ATI $255, that puts the CableCard tuner portion at over $150 (or 3 times the cost of an ATSC or NTSC tuner)!!

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:31 PM by CoupleOfPoints

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

With CableCard users losing HD channels and Dell's lack of HTPC form factor, who is buying an XPS 420?  I'm just waiting to switch to DirecTV for their upcoming HD tuner, or the new Hauppauge tuner.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:32 PM by Big Jilm

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

Alfred: TiVo had R&D costs on a platform that already existed; UDCP.ATI had R&D costs on a new platform, of which they worked side-by-side with CableLabs for multiple years before they even had solid specs for OCUR.

Pair that will millions in certification costs on a brand new platform, and the fact that they had to wait for Microsoft to release Vista for them to work, and you have a lot of time and money that went into this and far beyond what it takes to add UDCP support to any traditional CableCARD product.

CoupleOfPoints: Your point still doesn't make sense, I was just averaging the cost per tuner.  If your suggesting that it should below $150, I strongly agree.  If your suggesting that ATSC/NTSC = Encrypted QAM/CableCARD, then I don't think you know what you are talking about.  :)

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:49 PM by chrisl

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

HP now has two PCs that have cable card support: m9200t and d4999t.  I just bought a 9200t for $999 with a 750gb hard drive.  I think that deal ends today.  

It seems like the increase in price has more to do with what the market will bear.  Tuners are selling on ebay for around $300 consistently.  

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:59 PM by jmur

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

"worked side-by-side with CableLabs for multiple years"

There's the problem! :)  The CableLabs consortium was created by the cable companies for the sole purpose of charging "certification" fees. CableLabs provides no benefits whatsoever for consumers and has only resulted in unnecessarily causing higher prices for CableCard functionality.

The presence of the Hauppauge HD-PVR device makes CableLabs and their "certification" fees even less relevant. Hopefully there will be many other companies creating products like the HD-PVR, requiring no "certification fees", to accomplish functionality similar to the CableCard. If the new DirecTV HDPC-20 device works with any (non-OEM) PC as anticipated, then CableLabs  and their "certification" fees will be become less and less relevent, hopefully forcing CableCard out of the "OEM" PC space and into the "open" PC space if they expect to have any relevance.

Regarding my pricing comment, I was pointing out that the real cost of the ATSC/NTSC tuners are <$50 each, so at $255, the cost of the Encrypted QAM/CableCard portion of the ATI device is >$150 (a 3x difference). Averaging the "cost per tuner" on the ATI device doesn't make any sense, especially when the average cost for a ATSC/NTSC tuner is <$50.

The question then becomes, is the Encrypted QAM/CableCard tuner alone worth $150-$200? I too would like to see the ATI device (ATSC/NTSC/EncryptedQAM-CableCard) costing less than $150 (and also working in a non-OEM PC/OS).

Thursday, April 10, 2008 6:16 PM by CoupleOfPoints

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

"The presence of the Hauppauge HD-PVR device makes CableLabs and their "certification" fees even less relevant."

Completely agree.  I think a lot of people are going to be very happy with the HD-PVR even though IR blasting and a second generation copy are included.  The benefits outweigh nearly everything else.

"The question then becomes, is the Encrypted QAM/CableCard tuner alone worth $150-$200?"

I think so, but with one twist.  A M-Card OCUR that would allow for two-streams is worth $150-$200.  Hell, the best QAM/ATSC tuner on the market right now is the HDHomeRun, retail of $160.  I think $150-180 is the sweet spot for a MOCUR.  For a standard OCUR (like ATIs) the price really needs to be $100.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 6:54 PM by chrisl

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

Glad I ordered mine before the price went up. Now, if only they'd actually ship it.

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:23 PM by Ben Drawbaugh

# Project HTPC &raquo; Blog Archive &raquo; links for 2008-04-11

Pingback from  Project HTPC  &raquo; Blog Archive   &raquo; links for 2008-04-11

Friday, April 11, 2008 3:40 PM by Project HTPC » Blog Archive » links for 2008-04-11

# &raquo; Dell is shipping CableCARD tuners again! &raquo; Ben Drawbaugh

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:56 AM by » Dell is shipping CableCARD tuners again! » Ben Drawbaugh

# re: Dell Raises CableCARD Tuner Prices

ATI raised their price, that's not Dell's fault.  It looks like Dell just got it put back down again though, back to the $180/tuner price.  Time to update the headlines?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:46 PM by TheMarshall