[Christopher Calder]

I saw a TV news report last night that by July all televisions over 36" diagonal would have to have built in HDTV tuners and thus there would be huge sales of the old sets as stores cleared out the old tunerless models. I am confused on this point because I was led to believe there was a permanent loophole that you could call a TV a 'monitor' and by doing so escape the HDTV tuner mandate. So which is it?


Do you think this will increase the cost of large TV sets dramatically? When will they produce a HDTV tuner on a single chip?


Christopher

 

[rogo]

I believe it's half the big TVs this year; in fact, I'm fairly certain of that.


No, you can't pull the monitor scam with TVs. Not really.


As for cost, this year, you get screwed on price for the tuner. Next year, when all the big sets have them, suddenly they are de facto free.


The parts are about $10-15. The price delta this year is $500-1000.


Do you think HDTV prices are going to increase $500 next year? I'd bet on the opposite direction./