Frank Eory wrote: > The FCC made ATSC receiver/decoders mandatory. The FCC > approved the CEA-NCTA plug-and-play agreement that allows > uni-directional digital cable receivers/decoders. Note the > distinction between "mandatory" and "allows." Agreed, but note the timing of the two. They were coordinated and, if I remember correctly, Powell encouraged the cable plug and play agreement and acknowledged that this would impact more viewers than the ATSC tuner mandate. > The FCC was also very specific in closing the door on a > digital-cable-only option. If the product has a TV tuner of > any kind, it must include OTA ATSC capability at a minimum. Agreed. I think this was the practical way of re-creating, for DTV, a ubiquitous and standard interface as NTSC has become for analog. The thinking being that mandates are to be minimized, and that a cable front end would be easier to achieve without an explicit govt mandate. I really have no problem with any of this. The marginal cost of the ATSC front end, when combined with the digital cable front end, will very soon be in the noise, even for TVs and recorders costing in the low hundreds of $. And I fully expect European sets to go exactly the same route (well, DVB-T/C/S rather than ATSC etc.). 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.