Is the clunky cable box finally dead?

The cable box appears to be going the way of the VCR.

Spectrum, late last year, announced plans to phase out traditional cable boxes in favor of a streaming device. And while Comcast isn’t quite ready to abandon its set top box, it is offering that same streaming device to its broadband customers as a value-added service.

Spectrum, through its parent company Charter Communications, first announced plans to phase out the ubiquitous box in October, replacing it with a device called Xumo for new customers. Comcast, for now, will continue to use its X1 digital cable box, but news site CT Insider reports the company is adding more cable channels to its Xfinity Stream app that runs on the Xumo device.

For consumers making the switch, there’s not much to complain about, other than the loss of a familiar, clunky piece of tech in their entertainment center. Xumo, a joint venture between Comcast and Charter, lets customers both receive their typical cable channels, but also acts as a streaming device, letting them jump to services including Netflix, Hulu, Max, Disney+, Apple TV+, and others (essentially any streaming service you can imagine, including smaller ones like Tubi).

Moving from a cable box to Xumo will also lower monthly bills. Spectrum subscribers, for instance, paid $12.50 per month for their set-top box. A Xumo box can be purchased for $60 outright or rented for $5 per month. Customers can also take it with them when they travel.

Existing customers can swap out their set-top box for a Xumo at their cable company retail stores.

The downside? In Spectrum’s case, at least, the company raised rates at the same time it rolled out the less-expensive streaming device. (Comcast announced rate hikes late last year on some services.)

“Today’s fractured entertainment landscape has added a level of complexity that makes finding something to watch more burdensome for consumers,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of Xumo in a statement. “When we started Xumo, we set out with the ambition to take the decades of entertainment experience and technical innovation from Comcast and Charter and build a complete entertainment experience that breaks down the streaming silos and makes TV easy again.”

The move to a streaming device comes as cable companies have seen hundreds of thousands of customers cancel their service over the past several years, opting instead for streaming linear options, such as YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV, which typically are significantly cheaper. Charter, at the end of last June, reported a 5.3% drop in overall customers in the previous year. Comcast said it lost 2.1 million customers in that period, bringing its total to 15 million.

The end of the cable box also could mark the end of the coaxal cable that runs into the house. Xumo picks up its signals wirelessly via your home Wi-Fi network, though you will (of course) need to have your cable company’s Internet service to receive channels.

(Charter might be one of the big dogs in the cable world, but it’s not the only one ditching the cable box, and there are other options beyond Xumo. Smaller cable services, like Home Telecom, have long since abandoned the set-top box, opting instead to install customized Amazon Fire TV sticks in people’s homes. And satellite provider Dish’s Sling TV unit offers a cable bundle of sorts, though without local television channels, without any sort of device necessary.)

While Xumo isn’t notably different than any other streaming attachment in many ways, it does offer a convenience factor, with live-TV and on-demand all on one screen when you turn on the TV. You won’t have to navigate from one service to another. And you can still record favorite shows to DVR via your cable company’s cloud DVR service.

Don’t want to get rid of your cable box for some reason? No worries. For now, none of the cable services are requiring you to switch just yet.

Correction, January 18, 2024: A previous version of this article misstated Comcast’s plans for its cable boxes. The company is not phasing out its X1 set top box, but it is offering Xumo as a value add.