Cox new mini box

CoxHostage: "I reluctantly ordered my mini boxes and installed one of them yesterday. Still asking myself why after I installed one of them and found that not only did my HD KETV channel disappear but also I have to have this crappy little box sitting out in the open in the line of site of the remote in order to change channels. Can you imagine having a nice home theater system with all your wires hidden it the wall but now you have to have this fricken ugly plastic box sitting out in the open so you can change the channel on your tv?"

Are those John Lennon song lyrics? In what zip-code are you located? Have you inquired about the IR extender for the Mini-box?

weajd said:

They should have figured out a better way to do this without the stupid box.

What is your better solution, other than to give free access to anyone that can hook-up a cable?

All the complainers are not seeing the advantages of getting the Essential channels in HD and SD digital.

If all you want is the Local HDs and want to use your HDTV tuner, just get an Antenna. Problem solved.

Cox could add a new fee to recoup the cost of installing blocking filters on every drop, and then charge another fee to remove that filter.  Cox is trying to reduce truck-roll costs by encryption rather than filters on every tap.

Another item to consider is that Cox has to negotiate a Retransmission agreement with each broadcaster, that is based on the total number of Basic cable subscribers.  It would not surprise me if that number was padded with an actuarial that included some percentage to account for freeloaders, if Cox did not use encryption to attempt to limit that access.

I would think they could have come up with some kind of box that would install on the feed coming into the house that would unscramble the signal. That way consumers wouldn't need a box for each TV reducing having a box for each TV. I myself have 6 TVs in my home with one of them being a built in home theater system. Which would you have, one device or 6?

The single box is called a Gateway, and is limited to 6 Tuners and would be a lot more expensive than the Mini box, are you really wanting to pay even more?

ARRIS makes a headless gateway, but it still requires a "mini" box at each TV. Pace also makes a Gateway that runs TiVo software.
http://www.arrisi.com/products/product.asp?id=36

The product you describe does not exist, so Cox could not have picked that option.

You could get a SiliconDust HD HomeRunPRIME and a single CableCARD from Cox, but even then you would need an Android based "mini" box at each TV, (except 2012 Samsung SmartTVs) and those devices cannot display protected content, or CCI Byte 0x02 Copy Once, which Cox uses extensively, beyond the Locals.

Another option would be to get a TiVo Roamio and a TiVo Mini for every other TV, that set-up does support protected content.

Protected Content is not encryption, they are two different schemes

Hhhmmmm, and what's the cost of that?

CoxHostage said:

Hhhmmmm, and what's the cost of that?

Cost of what exactly?  If you are serious I will lay out some pricing for you.

bryaninphx said:

CoxHostage said:

Hhhmmmm, and what's the cost of that?

Cost of what exactly?  If you are serious I will lay out some pricing for you.

Somehow, I don't think that a Cox TV Technical Support forum is the correct place to push TiVos or "lay out" TiVo pricing. 

Domino said:

Somehow, I don't think that a Cox TV Technical Support forum is the correct place to push TiVos or "lay out" TiVo pricing. 

The OP asked a question, regarding Cox TV service and options to the Mini box, I am not employed by TiVo or SiliconDust, but more than happy to help a fellow customer get the best bang for his buck.

I am also doing a favor for Cox, a happy CableCARD customer is much more likely to stay with Cox, rather than switch to DirectTV or Dish, which has much better equipment.

Do I have to have this now to get a signal for tv's i have connections coming out of the wall?