View Full Version : TV set sales to plummet
robmx
08-08-2002, 01:35 AM
If as expected Chairman Powell mandates 8-VSB receivers in TV sets people will just buy monitors with no receivers at all.
This mandate will be the beginning of the end for NTSC receivers.
freddyfred89
08-08-2002, 12:06 PM
I find you very, very sexy ...
Wooger
08-09-2002, 09:21 AM
I, too, am oddly aroused. I personally think it is the 'X' at the end of his name. Grrrrrr...
kevinw
08-09-2002, 11:46 AM
Why would you think TV sales would plummet? According to the latest news this morning, mandatory tuners will add 200.00 to the cost of a set. That is 1/2 the price of an add on.
robmx
08-09-2002, 12:30 PM
Originally posted by kevinw
Why would you think TV sales would plummet? According to the latest news this morning, mandatory tuners will add 200.00 to the cost of a set. That is 1/2 the price of an add on.
People will buy monitors. That will be the cheapest way to buy a display device for their cable and satellite reception. TV setw will cost more because they will have receivers built in the the consumer doesn't need.
kevinw
08-09-2002, 01:07 PM
But they will need the tuner to receive OTA digital.
All tv's now have an analog tuner most people do not use if they use cable or satelite box. The majority of people who use a tuner are in rural areas and do not use a satelite. No one complains about dual tuners for PIP they can not use because of cable boxes and satelite.
robmx
08-09-2002, 05:58 PM
Originally posted by kevinw
But they will need the tuner to receive OTA digital.
All tv's now have an analog tuner most people do not use if they use cable or satelite box. The majority of people who use a tuner are in rural areas and do not use a satelite. No one complains about dual tuners for PIP they can not use because of cable boxes and satelite.
There were around 30 million analog TV sets and 2 million digtital ready sets sold last year. Of those 32 million sales maybe 100,000 decided (some inadvertently) that they wanted to receive digital TV over the air.
If they do not want to receiver digital TV over the air they do not need the tuner.
Therefore they will go out of their way to buy monitors that will work with cable and satellite and that will be less exspensive than the ones that have unneeded receivers built in.
Merchants, gray marketers and smugglers will undercut any attempt to force unwanted receivers on the public.
Contrary to what Chairman Powell said about all analog TV sets becoming obselete, these analog sets will work fine untill they die a natural death. They will work with cable and satellite stb's and with COFDM receivers working with channels 54,55 and 59 far into the future.
They should also work with 8-VSB if there were any inexpensive 8-VSB receivers that would work with analog TV sets like there are for COFDM at $44, $107 etc. in the UK.
freddyfred89
08-09-2002, 07:43 PM
Is it getting hot in here or is it my pants?
Originally posted by kevinw
But they will need the tuner to receive OTA digital.
All tv's now have an analog tuner most people do not use if they use cable or satelite box. The majority of people who use a tuner are in rural areas and do not use a satelite. No one complains about dual tuners for PIP they can not use because of cable boxes and satelite.
Whoa... they certainly do need that tuner to select the VHF or UHF frequency of the cable channel they want to watch. The difference is that they demodulate to a nice simple analog video signal and the DTV receiver will demodulate AND DECODE to a digital signal.
The DTV tuners have to do a lot more than the tuners that provided analog and video to our old analog sets. It was such a standard thing that it became a commodity item (once the mechanical mechanism was no longer needed) that was always made part of any VCR or TV.
I'm a relative newbie at this, but I believe the DTV tuner has a lot more work to do after demodulating the new UHF frequencies. As I understand it, it has to determine which of the 18 different formats it has received and handle each format appropriately. I looked at the features of the RCA DTC100. It has three RF inputs. One for DirectTV frequencies, and two that handle either cable or antenna frequencies (VHF and UHF) This receiver lets you choose between three simultaneous RF inputs and provides an RGB output to a DTV monitor as well as two analog outputs to whatever. Now thats a lot of stuff and I'd just as soon keep it separate from my display device.
Personally, I'd rather pay for one good receiver and leave that cost out of my TV monitor. Id like my monitor logic to handle making analog input look like digital and stuff like that.
My interpretation of today's FCC ruling is that TV manufacturers will have to stick a DTV tuner/decoder in every DTV that they turn out beginning in 2004. I think they are paying too much attention to who is buying them dinner and not enough attention to COMMUNICATION, as in the administration of transmission frequencies and standards. Because if they did, they would realize that if all the good stuff was TRANSMITTED as DTV, consumers would stop buying analog TVs altogether.
I think the FCC is in the transmission business, not the reception business. Set manufacturers should be free to make whatever they think will sell, period.
kevinw
08-13-2002, 09:28 PM
Bob, your right they do use a tuner that is set to 1 channel forever.
As to the mandatory tuner, most people are not geeks about Hd the way us early adopters are. They want to plug in the tube and flip channels. In this case plug the antenna into the back of the Tv and watch HD.
Right Kevin. I described my own cable setup, not thinking that it was unusual. I don't have a cable "box". The cable goes to the antenna input of my "Cable Ready" (NTSC) TV which can tune to 181 channels in several bands (VHF, UHF, and four CATV bands)
Some of the channels are scrambled, but I don't care because I don't subscribe to them. If I did, I would have a cable "box" to descramble them, which would be the setup you describe.
My new DTV arrives today. It has the same 181 channel NTSC tuner, into which I will plug my cable for viewing the same old stuff (analog). It's HD input will go to a Receiver yet to be purchased, with an antenna yet to be purchased. That's the plan... to avoid any new subscriptions until I feel I just can't do without another one.
