Verizon STB on EBAY

[TheSanchez]

Hey guys.  I figured now would be as good as time as any to put this message up.  You may or may not know that there are verizon stb for sale up on ebay.  Every other month or so we look and report to our security department what we find and we work with ebay to recover our equipment.  I am here to tell you guys not to be duped into buying any of these boxes.  Even if you buy one it will not work until we activate on the network and send the encryption codes down to the stb to unencrypt programming.  I have gotten multiple reports of people paying upwards of $500 for these things over the past few years only for me to tell them you are still going to pay a subscription charge.  Not to mention you have no way of knowing if this equipment is even functional or not.  I recommend you treat this type of situation as someone trying to scam you out of your hard earned money.

On a side note there are certain types of equipment that you can own that will work with verizon cable cards IE tivo and pc tuner cards that take CC. 

TS

[TimSykes]

---

@TheSanchez wrote:

Hey guys.  I figured now would be as good as time as any to put this message up.  You may or may not know that there are Verizon stb for sale up on ebay.  Every other month or so we look and report to our security department what we find and we work with ebay to recover our equipment.  I am here to tell you guys not to be duped into buying any of these boxes.  Even if you buy one it will not work until we activate on the network and send the encryption codes down to the stb to unencrypt programming.  I have gotten multiple reports of people paying upwards of $500 for these things over the past few years only for me to tell them you are still going to pay a subscription charge.  Not to mention you have no way of knowing if this equipment is even functional or not.  I recommend you treat this type of situation as someone trying to scam you out of your hard earned money.

On a side note there are certain types of equipment that you can own that will work with verizon cable cards IE tivo and pc tuner cards that take CC. 

TS

---

FYI PC TV tuner cards that take a cablecard are only available on OEM PC's like dell. HP etc. But not all OEM will work on a select few of them. They have to be certified my the manufacture of the cablecard system (don't remember their name). Most people who have media center PC's like myself, build them. So we are out of luck. 

 And Tivo still has a monthly service as well as buying equipment, not a really good solution IMO.  

[KenAF]

---

@TimSykes wrote:

---

@TheSanchez wrote:

On a side note there are certain types of equipment that you can own that will work with verizon cable cards IE tivo and pc tuner cards that take CC. 

TS

---

 And Tivo still has a monthly service as well as buying equipment, not a really good solution IMO.  

---

Looking at those $50-$200 Motorola HDTV DVRs on ebay, one might be led to think that this technology is affordable.  It is anything but.  That equipment is "cheap" because it is stolen.  The actual price of this equipment is much higher.

The QIP DVRs are sold exclusively to Verizon in North America, but if you could buy them, they would cost $400-$500, which is also what Verizon charges you if you lose the box.  Even after you bought the box, you would need the Verizon DVR software -- developed and supported by employees that must be compensated -- for it to operate on the FiOS network.  You don't get that software without Verizon's say so, and you can't tune encrypted channels without their authorization.  Verizon does not authorize stolen equipment and allow you to retain ownership; at very best, they say, "thank you for finding our stolen DVR" and charge you all the normal fees to use it.

TiVo sells their HD DVR direct at $599 without fees, but most people choose to buy the subsidzed version for $199-$250 that requires monthly or yearly fees.  You pick your poison.  Even at those prices, TiVo still doesn't generate a profit.  Looking at TiVo's annual report, it costs them about $6/mo per customer to provide the service (guide data is NOT free for commercial use, and also costs money to distribute) and develop/maintain the software.  It's not easy to generate a profit when you are taking a loss of $50-$100 on almost every box sold, and only netting $4-6/mo on each subscription after subtracting your costs.

HDTV DVR technology is still relatively expensive to design, manufacture, distribute, and support, and involves a growing number of licensing issues (TiVo and DirecTV DVR patents, Gemstar guide interface patents, guide data licensing which isn't free for commercial products, etc).   These represent significant barriers of entry for third-party manufacturers that want to develop their commercial retail DVR solution.  For the forseeable future, I expect most DVR solutions will remain dependent on the cable company to supply the software (i.e. True2Way) to make their boxes work; that puts the burden of the software R&D and licensing issues on the cable company, which will then require direct or indirect compensation from the consumer, either in the form of a higher programming costs or a separate DVR fee.

Message Edited by KenAF on 12-04-2008 07:23 PM

[CharlesH]

Good information.

[CRobGauth]

---

@TheSanchez wrote:

Hey guys.  I figured now would be as good as time as any to put this message up.  You may or may not know that there are verizon stb for sale up on ebay.  Every other month or so we look and report to our security department what we find and we work with ebay to recover our equipment.  I am here to tell you guys not to be duped into buying any of these boxes.  Even if you buy one it will not work until we activate on the network and send the encryption codes down to the stb to unencrypt programming.  I have gotten multiple reports of people paying upwards of $500 for these things over the past few years only for me to tell them you are still going to pay a subscription charge.  Not to mention you have no way of knowing if this equipment is even functional or not.  I recommend you treat this type of situation as someone trying to scam you out of your hard earned money.

On a side note there are certain types of equipment that you can own that will work with verizon cable cards IE tivo and pc tuner cards that take CC. 

TS

---

Do you know if V* prosecutes, or do they just try and get the boxes removed from circulation?

[Techman28]

basically what Verizon does is get the boxes back and that's about it.

[FloridaFiOS]

Interesting - so that's where the missing STB I returned to Verizon ended when I upgraded it to HD DVR...(;