Your neighbor's foreclosure may raise your cable rates
by Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Mar 10th 2008 at 2:18PM
We've never been a big fan of the exclusive deals that some homeowner's associations sign with content providers, but despite the FCC's recent ban, many contracts are still in place. With much of the country watching their property values plummet, it appears some are having to pay more for HD as a result as well. The problem is that the contracts only make sense if everyone in your 'hood is paying their part, and as you'd expect when a house gets foreclosed on, the last thing the newly homeless people are worried about is paying the HOA fees. So as more houses go vacant, the price per house goes up and in at least one community in Florida, it has gone up about 44 percent. So if you're on the board of one of theses things, and someone gets the bright idea to sign an exclusive deal, do everyone a favor and just tell 'em no.[Via Tampa HDTV]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
andyg8180 @ Mar 10th 2008 2:53PM
god i love my OTA antenna... I get network TV, sports, and other crap... And i paid a one time fee of $50 for the purchase of the actual antenna... and IMO, the antenna's signal is much more cleaner than the crap i was getting from the cable company... but thats just me...
I give my money to netflix for Pay-TV... Ive been cable free for 1 year and 3 months now...
Chad @ Mar 10th 2008 3:06PM
I agree with the over the air signal looking better than cable. Cable hd looks like crap to me.
Jake @ Mar 10th 2008 6:51PM
God I hate home owners associations. Communist bastards. I don't even own a home--I just revile the idea of anyone telling me what I can or can't do with my own g--damned property, or who I have to buy services from--or for how much--or that I have to pay for services that I don't want or need. And that is pretty much all HOAs do.
Siva @ Mar 10th 2008 3:27PM
One other great thing about antenna combined with a free OTA HD tuner for your PC or mac (like the MCE stuff, Elgato Stuff, HDHomeRun) - you can watch OTA HD TV on your schedule with ZERO cost. Also, since you don't have a gazillion channels, you pick and choose the program you want to watch and be done with it. You tend to do other things. I made the mistake of getting DishHD at my home two weeks ago after being OTA-HD only for 3 years - my wife is just channel surfing all the time - true we saw a few good programs - but the filler that takes up our other time - pure waste.
I used to subscribe to Netflix too. A lot cheaper at $10/month. I am paying $40/month for Dish now!
Xyzzy @ Mar 10th 2008 3:34PM
"So if you're on the board of one of theses things, and someone gets the bright idea to sign an exclusive deal, do everyone a favor and just tell 'em no."
One step ahead of ya. It's actually one of the main reasons I ran to be on the board. Lots of people were trying to get satellite dishes banned from the neighborhood. They even had the lawyers draft up the additions to the rules and regs documents for the association until I told them that they couldn't do that and showed them the FCC OTARD rules. They still fought it, but I managed to get on the board and now whenever someone tries doing something anti-dish, I'm there to squash it.
Not quite an "exclusive" contract deal, but close. :)
Don @ Mar 10th 2008 3:58PM
My HOA has one of these agreements and honestly, it's not a bad thing. $25 of my monthly assessment goes toward basic cable. I only pay $15.99 a month to Comcast for every digital channel offered aside from any premiums, aside from Internet and DVR rental.
We are still free to have dishes if wanted, but the Comcast spigot is on in every unit in our association. Not that I'm a huge proponent of Comcast, but at least it's better than poor quality HD coming down from either of the two satellite providers.
Xyzzy @ Mar 10th 2008 4:20PM
But it's not free. If you wanted satellite (let's say you like Sunday Ticket, for example), you'd be throwing $25 away.
The association shouldn't be forcing people to pay money for television, that's not their job.
And as the article says, when people start foreclosing, the association takes in less money, and if there's a contract in place for cable TV then you're going to lose things like lawn care and tree replacement before you lose the TV which is just stupid.
Jerry @ Mar 10th 2008 4:39PM
Poor quality HD from Satellite? You must not have looked at Dish or DTV lately. I actually ran both Cox & DirecTV side by side for awhile to test out the quality difference. DTV Is 10x better than Cox. I tested in a Phillips 42" 1080P LCD and an Epson 1080P Projector. DirecTV has better black, sharper image, and is all around a lot higher quality whereas Cox was pixelated, jagged and just a horrible image. I had Comcast back in Seattle because I couldn't get DTV where I was located and it was just as bad as Cox. For high quality HD you can't beat Satellite.
Prey521 @ Mar 10th 2008 5:41PM
Low quality HD from satellite? LMAO, DirecTV HD kicks the ass of any cable provider out there with it comes to HD picture quality. Only HD provider that's better in terms of PQ are the fiber providers (FIOS, U-Verse) since their feeds are uncompressed. Stop talking out of your ass with those ignorant comments.
why not the LS2/LS7? @ Mar 10th 2008 9:43PM
FIOS/U-Verse are compressed out the yin-yang.
An uncompressed 720p signal would be 165 megabytes per second. FIOS/U-Verse deliver much less bandwidth than this.
Ben @ Mar 10th 2008 9:45PM
why not the LS2/LS7?,
You are not correct. FiOS is one of the only providers that doesn't compress the signal any further.
FiOS is much closer to a traditional cable co, then to U-Verse, they are nothing alike. FiOS doesn't even use VOIP for anything but VOD, while U-verse uses it for everything.
eugene @ Mar 10th 2008 5:46PM
HOAs, bringing a little bit of communism into our homes, one monthly fee at a time.
andy @ Mar 10th 2008 7:20PM
nice.
I specifically avoided buying a home in a HOA area, and I passed up a good deal on one home due to the neighborhood covenants.
Read those things people, when they pass 1000 pages (like the one I passed up), they take more value than they add.
Xyzzy @ Mar 10th 2008 7:35PM
People complain about HOAs all the time, but you know the best way to counteract a bad HOA? RUN FOR THE BOARD! It's like politics -- you can't complain if you're not willing to help fix the problem.
Like I said, our HOA was trying to reduce homeowners rights to satellite dishes -- they even had the rules written up saying that homeowners could only have one dish, that it had to be 1m in length, that it had to be in a specific location, that it couldn't be on a patio, etc, etc, etc. All those rules were unenforcible so when it was time, I ran for the Board and am now the VP. First order of business? Repealing all the stupid dish rules.
Most HOAs have monthly meetings as well - ATTEND them and voice your concerns!
A lot of crazy people join boards because they love the power. I don't understand it personally -- but I've seen it in my own neighborhood. You need to fight those crazy people and make sure they can't screw crap up. :)
There's a lot of benefits to HOAs -- not having to worry about plants, lawns, neighbors parking rusty old cars on their lawn, etc. So get out there and be the voice of reason to stop them from being crappy. :)
/soapbox