The reasons why Freeview has succeeded are: a) It is free b) The receivers are extremely affordable c) The receivers are often given away with high ticket CE purchases d) The modulation system works. It works in severe multipath conditions. = End of story. e) The content line-up is very attractive if you only have 5 analogue TV = channels, one of which has quite ropey reception in many areas f) the main services are all widescreen and this is the quickest way to g= et anamorphic widescreen g) The picture quality is very good (i isn't HDTV, its component EDTV, bu= t for most UK homes it looks good) h) There are many digital radio stations carried via Freeview: this has p= roved to be one of its USPs as you can have DTV and digital radio all in = one for $50 i) The reception issues with any DTV system (cliffs, antennas, margins, c= ables) are now very widely understood at retail level. After seven years = this is not surprising j) A large number of cable and DBS homes are using Freeview on second and= third TV sets ( why pay additional subs all around the house): about 25%= of the base k) You can receive it mobile if you have a diversity receiver in your car= , SUV, etc. This is only just starting l) It is marketed very slickly by the BBC and has shot from nowhere to be= a household brand m) Unlike the US the broadcasters have cooperated to put the platform tog= ether: a clear example of the group survival instinct in play. n) It has a full EPG service with full localisation for each TV market. T= his is the glue for a PVR industry which is just taking off. 0) COFDM chips are now peanuts because of the volumes and, unlike the sys= tem which dare not speak its name, it works. pP CE vendors now have the confidence to integrate it in TVs, LCDs, plase= tc. Sony + Panasonic announced that all their bigger ranges will be digi= tal by year end: that will increase the penetration further. q) By the end of the year Freeview will be in around 35% of all homes, ov= ertaking DBS which has 30% penetration. r) It has now reached a virtual economic cycle. The things that are wrong with Freeview are: a) It is still only available to 75% of homes b) Its transmitters operate at max 20kW whereas the big sticks should be = run at around 100kW (cf Berlin...) c) There has been no use of SFN technologies: broadcasting is quite local= here. d) They have not really expanded the network since it was first put in in= 1998-2000: this is about to change. e) Unlike Berlin etc it does not have widespread indoor antenna coverage = because of the low powers. That would reallt tilt the economics of distri= bution in favour of DTV bigtime f) It has insufficient capacity to compete with DBS on a pay footing whic= h is why ITVDigital died. But many lessons have been learned about how to roll out DTV successfulll= y. In France you will see the next step in DTV: a system which combines M= PEG2 SDTV Freeview, MPEG4HDTV, and a dedicated DVB-H network. That will b= e a very interesting departure later this year... Kind Regards, Dermot Nolan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.