Bert wrote: >Cliff Benham wrote: >> HA!!! >> What percentage of sales do you think the Accurian box >>represents to Tandy on a national level? >> >> I assure you it is so small as to be less than dust. > >Say whatever you want, but a nationwide market of upwards >of 40M units is nothing to sneeze at. Perhaps you're only >saying that we have to be closer to a real analog cutoff >date for that to materialize. Bert, it ain't gonna happen. Somebody out there doesn't want it to. Can't you read the tea leaves? Somewhere in the layers of Humongous Govt. someone wants to completely eliminate all U.S. OTA TV so they can auction off the bandwidth for more profitable uses. Someone on this list made this statement a month or so ago, and it really makes sense. Why else have none of the manufacturers spent much effort developing and *marketing* OTA STBs like they are in the rest of the world? Why is DTV mostly advertised as available over satellite and cable? Why don't any of the sales people at the consumer electronics stores know you can receive DTV OTA? And why [aside from trying to save it's inventor/patent owner Zenith, the last U.S. consumer electronics mfgr. at the time] was 8VSB chosen over what the rest of the world is using, COFDM, if not to *assure* the death of OTA broadcasting by virtue of the fact that 8VSB does not work well and can not easily replicate current NTSC signal coverage? The only obvious answer to all these questions is that someone wants it to die. What other conclusion is there? >> It is a bother to them to have to deal with us bargain >> basement hunters who come in wanting these off the wall >> discintinued pieces of junk, when they could be selling >> a DirecTV or Dish system and making some real profit. > >First of all, the market for OTA boxes is roughly as big >as the market for DBS. About 20 percent of households. >And secondly, I am baffled by the traction negativism >seems to get. You weren't sounding quite so negative when >you first tried this little guy. Why the change of heart? I still think the Accurian box is the best I have been able to test, but the reality for the future of OTA DTV is that it is going away because someone in control wants it to fail. > >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.