Not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me there.

I certainly don’t want people paying an arm and a leg for gadgets. In fact that’s counter intuitive to my goal. The more gadgets cost, the less people will buy, and the less innovation will occur. So I’d love to see the price come down. Especially for Digital TV hardware.

If the cost of digital TVs come down, you still won’t see people buying them. Why would they. What’s the advantage? As has been proved many time over, it’s the content that drives adoption, and hence my suggestion that regulation is put in place to encourage the networks to deliver more. The Government just doesn’t seem to understand this.

Your suggestion that people buy the hardware to drive innovation puts the cost of innovation squarely in the lap of the consumer. I’m suggesting make the networks develop content that makes the consumer want to buy the hardware.

By the way. If you buy an analogue TV you can by a set top box for a couple of hundred dollars. That’s cheaper than your $2000 lowest price comment.

Rich

At the moment it costs maybe $400 for a good analogue television. To buy a digital TV costs $2000 (lowest price). Why drive consumerism to the point where everyone has to spend that kind of money for a TV they probably don’t need?

If digital television is the way to go in Australia (and I can’t argue that it’s not) then let the manufacurers bring the prices down to a level where more people can afford them. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that the government is reluctant to mandate digital TV. This is supposed to be the medium of the people, not the medium of the few who can afford it.