At 2:28 PM -0500 1/11/05, Bob Miller wrote: >In The UK there was no analog turnoff and sales of receivers continue to >accelerate with a receiver going for $37.53 and $56.29 pre Christmas. I >think you had to buy $50 worth of merchandise to get the $37.53 price. >As Craig mentioned sales for the quarter exceeded 1.3 million up to >12/11/04. That would suggest 1.6 million for the quarter, 4 million for >the year and 5.5 million next year. 11.5 million the first three years >or in US terms 69 million. What if we had been at it for the last 5 >years instead of the UK's 2? What if we had COFDM for the last 5 years? >How many USDTV's would there have been created if we could have had a >business plan that made sense? How many USDTVs would fare as well as On Digital did? While I admire your enthusiasm for a transmission system that works, this aspect of the "product" is only important to consumers when it DOES NOT work. Consumers could care less about the "technical infrastruture;" what they care about is the content and the value proposition. OnDigital DID NOT provide a compelling value proposition; it plodded along while BSkyB walked off with 80% or more of the subscription DTV market in the U.K. Freeview dramatically changed the value proposition (there is something appealing about "FREE"); as a result it has grown to become the 10 largest DTV deployment in the world. > >USDTV almost gives their 8-VSB receivers away now at $19.95. Their cost >is close to or just over $150 per. Our cost for COFDM HD receivers in >2001 was $140 in quantity. Our plan at the time called for giving away >the receiver. Actually the customer would pay for it with a one or two >year subscription. And how is USDTV doing? Last i checked they had 10,000 subscribers in three markets, where they can reach nearly 2,000,000 homes; that 0.5% market penetration. Sadly, this may be the largest deployment of ATSC receivers, but it is not exactly setting the world on fire. > >What if there had been 10 USDTV ventures over the last 5 years offering >free COFDM HD receivers? That is an even better deal than what is being >offered in the UK. You mean the On Digital deal that failed? >I suggest that by the end of 2005 our digital >transition would have been over a full year ahead of the 2006 deadline. >We would have 90 million receivers distributed by the end of 2005. The >only controversy left would be that many homes had 2 to 5 receivers and >that the 85% still had not been met. But of course the whole deadline >thing would be passe. Broadcasters would already have been turning off >their analog transmitters as fast as they could in many markets. Sorry Bob but I do not think you can justify this assertion based on the notion of using the broadcast spectrum to deliver a PAID multichannel service that competes with far more capable cable and DBS competitors. If on the other hand, U.S. broadcasters had been offering a reliable FREE multichannel service, I suspect that it would be doing as well as Freeview. I seriously doubt that this would have resulted in the sales of 90 million receivers; 20-30 million would be a more realistic estimate. >May sound crazy but so did the numbers being racked up in the UK every >quarter. I thought I was way out on a limb when I predicted 1 million >for the last quarter of 2004 in the UK and we are going to be 60% over >that. Next year could be as I predict, 5.5 million or maybe it will be >10 million in the UK. Why not? Every time I come up with a crazy number >the beat it. Its amazing what can happen when the value proposition improves... 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.