Dan Grimes wrote: > Really? You think cable and DBS are going to have a > free tier at some point? I've never known the cable > company to ever reduce anything but quality and > customer support! If DBS and cable did offer a free > tier, I bet that would put the nail in the OTA coffin! I wouldn't make that bet. If a free tier is offered by these subscription services, it would be primarily to lure people away from OTA and onto their walled garden. The ultimate objective is not to shift income from the "haves" (the paying subscribers) to the "have nots" (the freeloaders), but rather to increase their paying subscribers. Should free OTA TV go away, IMO, the first thing that will happen is that the free tiers would also disappear from DBS and cable. I haven't seen any indication that the FCC will mandate a free tier from these services. Also, as Mark Schubin has pointed out many times, there are situations in which neither cable nor DBS can be used as easily as terrestrial OTA. And finally, the OTA I get today, just NTSC, is better than what a basic-basic (unadvertized but available) service from Cox would provide me. More stations, because OTA gives me Baltimore/Annapolis as well as the Washington area stations. I'd expect any free tier to be no better than this basic-basic package? 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.