At 11:08 AM -0400 7/8/04, Manfredi, Albert E wrote: >However we slice it, stand-alone STBs costing under $300 have >existed since last Christmas. *Therefore*, it makes no sense to >insist that built-in tuners must cost $300 today, much less years >from now. As Kon says, it's a rip. And the cost of the newest >tuners is no higher than the the cost of these older ones. The fact that some cheap boxes have been sold has little to do with the fact that the cost for adding multiple Demods to new TVs is still hovering around $300...or more. Clearance prices on obsolete inventory are not an indication of real costs. Subsidized boxes like the USDTV unit are not an indication of real costs ( by the way, you must pay more for the box if you DO NOT subscribe to USDTV). Reality is that the added cost for ATSC/one-way cable support is still at least $300. Also keep in mind that these implementations now carry the extra overhead of DVI/HDCP and Firewire/DTCP support, and the associated royalties. Some of the fire sale products may not have had support for these new features needed to support CA for cable and the BF for DTV broadcasts. And then there is the slot for the cablecard... Regards Craig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.