John Willkie wrote: >I think Frank Eory owned a piece of that too; now, he's talking about TV sets with 8-VSB tuners for sale at a grocery store. >I think the tenet still stands: people don't watch modulation or technology, they watch content. Yes, I expected to see tunerless monitors in response to a government mandate that adds cost but little value for most consumers. I also predicted "dirt" 8-VSB, as in dirt-cheap -- at whatever level of performance comes at that low price -- so as to minimize the added cost of the ATSC IRD. Tunerless monitors are few and far between in the "home entertainment" category, but of course they still dominate the PC category. But dirt-cheap 8-VSB has come to pass, more as a result of Moore's Law than any revolutionary signal processing or architectural advancements. 8-VSB performance has improved, and whether broadcasters or ATSC advocates think it's good enough or not, it is what it is and consumers don't know whether or not it could be or should be better. Dirt-cheap tuners have also come to pass, due to the maturation of silicon tuners and the price pressure those have put on the traditional tin-can tuners. Again, whether some of you believe the tuners are good enough or not, they are as good as they can be at that very low price point. Consumers who are in the market for a new TV set go to Best Buy, Circuit City, WalMart or wherever -- maybe they even grab a cheap one at the grocery store on impulse -- and they must make a selection based on what is offered. Obviously if no tunerless monitors are offered, they don't even know to ask about those. They buy based on screen size and video format capability, they buy based on display technology, they buy based on A/V IO capability and so on. For the most part, they don't particularly care whether their new TV has a "digital tuner" or not, since most of them will never connect it to an antenna anyway. So the CE industry has responded to the mandate by adding the lowest cost ATSC IRD possible to their low & midrange sets, perhaps something a little better to their high-end sets, rather than removing NTSC tuners and selling tunerless monitors. But to the consumer who has no use for an antenna and maybe a dozen 'free' TV channels, the point is moot. You're absolutely right John -- they don't watch modulation or technology, they watch content. And the overwhelming majority get that content from cable or DBS. -- Frank Eory ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.