owned v lease from big box...

[GopherIce]

I have been reading this over and over and maybe it has been explained thoroughly and I have missed it...but can someone explain to me in simple terms how equipment purchased from say BB is leased and not owned?

[Stuart Sweet]

Because you're paying an upfront lease fee, not a purchase price. It's really just accounting, but it boils down to this...

in exchange for your agreement not to tamper with the thing, DIRECTV gives you heavily discounted replacements if it breaks or if a new model comes along after a couple of years.

[boba]

A lease with basic receivers is free for upto 4 receivers. If you upgrade to a HD receiver or a DVR you pay a $99 lease "UPGRADE FEE" Or a HDDVR has a $199 upgrade fee. If you want to own that HDDVR you will pay in the area of $599 to actually own the box. I don't know of any bigbox stores that are "SELLING" the receivers just leasing because that is there low price advertising.

[davring]

I believe the only place you may purchase receivers outright is through D*.

[Grentz]

and it is nice that they lease IMO because it could be like before where they charged $999 for the HD Tivo units that only got ~10 HD channels!

[bobnielsen]

I believe the only place you may purchase receivers outright is through D*.

The exception to this is the HR21-PRO (but you won't find that at a big box store).

[BlueGuy]

I'd love to know what the cost to D* is on say an HR-21. I bet it is shocking how cheap they are to produce.

[longrider]

Actually they are not that cheap to produce. I think the quote (some time ago) was $300 - $400 for a HD DVR but they were hoping to get it down to the $200 range

[JLucPicard]

I have been reading this over and over and maybe it has been explained thoroughly and I have missed it...but can someone explain to me in simple terms how equipment purchased from say BB is leased and not owned?
Essentially, all of DirecTV's newly acquired receivers/DVRs are leased units now, save for the HR21-Pro as was mentioned.

The receivers/DVRs can be obtained through DirecTV, through on-line retailers like SolidSignal or ValueElectronics, or brick & mortar shops like Best Buy & Circuit City. All of those "outlets" are just ways of getting the units to the masses, so regardless of which company you go through to obtain them, they are leased.

It's just the function of walking into a store and plunking down money and walking out with the product that makes people use the words "buy" and "purchase" - it's still just paying an up-front lease cost to acquire the equipment.

[inkahauts]

Think of it like a car lease... they make you pay some upfront, and a little each month...

[bobnielsen]

Think of it like a car lease... they make you pay some upfront, and a little each month...

Actually you are paying all of the leasing upfront. The monthly fee (which is called a lease fee) doesn't apply to the first receiver (in place of the old mirror or additional receiver fee for owned receivers).

[Bill Broderick]

Unlike with cable companies, where you pay more per month for advanced receivers, the monthly lease fee for all DirecTV receivers is the same. Instead, with DirecTV, you pay a one time fee to upgrade to a higher level receiver/DVR.

[Ken S]

Unlike with cable companies, where you pay more per month for advanced receivers, the monthly lease fee for all DirecTV receivers is the same. Instead, with DirecTV, you pay a one time fee to upgrade to a higher level receiver/DVR.

And a mandatory HD access fee plus a DVR fee and agree to a two-year programming commitment with no cap on price increases during the period.

[wingrider01]

And a mandatory HD access fee plus a DVR fee and agree to a two-year programming commitment with no cap on price increases during the period.

No different then a lot of other business ventures that sell services out there. called retail expierence.

[Ken S]

No different then a lot of other business ventures that sell services out there. called retail expierence.

I didn't say it was different...I was just listing the rest of the "costs" involved. When you consider them they add up to quite a bit more than the initial lease fee.

[TigersFanJJ]

And a mandatory HD access fee plus a DVR fee

True ONLY if you upgrade to a HD/DVR and don't already have a HD or DVR receiver on your account. I could upgrade one of my SD receivers to a HD/DVR today and the only cost difference would be the upfront charge.

[BattleZone]

I have been reading this over and over and maybe it has been explained thoroughly and I have missed it...but can someone explain to me in simple terms how equipment purchased from say BB is leased and not owned?

You can go to a new car dealer and buy a car, but you have to pay for the entire car up-front (even if that means applying and getting approved for a loan). It's expensive, but you own the car.

You can also lease the car, which means you pay a much smaller up-front cost, and smaller monthly payment. You agree to keep the car for a certain number of years and drive less than a certain number of miles. When the contract is up, you turn the car back in, because you never owned it.

The difference, in this case, is really only how much money you had to pay up-front and the contract that goes with the lease.

In the broad strokes, DirecTV equipment is very similar. You *could* choose to pay full MSRP for your receiver ($449 for an HD-DVR) directly from DirecTV, and you'd own it, and not be subject to any new programming commitment.

But for virtually everyone, it makes much more sense to lease, because technology changes so quickly that in 2-5 years, your receiver may become obsolete. If you paid all that money upfront, and technology changes and makes your receiver a brick, or just doesn't support the nifty new features that your neighbor has, then you spent a lot of money for nothing. By leasing, you spend much less money up-front (which everyone likes), and with various lease upgrade offers, you can keep upgrading your receivers as the years go by for far less than it would cost to buy them. Plus, folks who cancel the service, to whom the receivers would then be worthless, turn them back in, and they can be redeployed for the rest of their usable lifespan instead of ending up in a landfill.

The only real benefit of buying a receiver is if you're only going to keep the service for a few months. It doesn't take very long (3-4 months) before you hit "break-even" between leasing and paying the Early Termination Fee (ETF) and buying the receiver retail and canceling, except that you could argue that the owned receiver could be sold to recoup some of the money. But even then, the low lease price makes an owned receiver less valuable on the secondary market, so you won't get all that much.

Anyway, aside from the HR21Pro, the only place you can buy receivers to OWN is directly from DirecTV.