Craig Birkmaier wrote: > I have been saying for several years that the price delta will be at > least $300 for years to come. Then how come Mark writes: " - It might be worth noting that ATI's new HDTV Wonder card, approximating the circuitry needed to add DTT reception to a TV, retails for $199: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1619390,00.asp>" Clearly, if the separate PC card can be sold for under $200, a built-in front end, without PCI backplane, should go for much less. Also, if STBs came in at under $300 last Christmas, and a few were as low as $200 at Circuit City (could be old remnants, but still), it just makes no sense to keep insisting on $300 as premium when the front end is built-in. Pure nonsense, yes? Also, I pointed out a two-chip front end that lists for $80 not long ago. Even adding in royalties and markup, even this year, it's hard to justify any $300. Let alone "for years to come." > Others were saying > that the added cost delta would soon be $50... "Others" would be Motorola. By 2007. Sounds pretty credible to me. I've been guesstimating less than that, by 1/1/2007. Assuming the FCC doesn't levy some new requirements, of course. > that's barely enough to > cover the cost of all the royalty payments. I thought the royalty payments were less than $20 all told? And they will run out, eventually. > Am I surprised that the delta has now shrunk to only $300 on the > cheapest models? If the 1st generation RCA DTC 100 in its final stand-alone version listed for about $459, the $300 premium for built-in front ends today can *only* indicate that the prices are way inflated. I don't understand how anything else could be concluded. And what would be so strange about inflated prices the first year a CE product category is on the market? Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.