This is a year old, but much of it is still relevant:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...le-8-41-21.jsp

Cheers,
David.

"David Robinson" wrote in message
m...
This is a year old, but much of it is still relevant:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...le-8-41-21.jsp

Cheers,
David.

A nice but one sided view. Regulation of the media may be messy and result
in the history of problems outlined. But I'm not sure de-regulation of TV
supply would have worked without problems. One could imangine having your
road dug up 4 or 5 times as competing cable companies competed to increase
market share. Houses littered with multiple free sat dish's to pick up
different sat's (no one would give away directional systems to pick up their
competitors signals).

Unfortunately the article does point out the "big" problem. The focus has
been on treating every house as if they owned a single TV. All the
technology has been developed from that viewpoint. We need technology which
solve the problem of multiple analog sets in the home. I'm not about to have
multiple STB's connected to all my old equipment, including the 3 VCR's I
have.

I want some kind of "crossover" product. A box which can simultaneously
convert the main 5 channels into UHF and broadcast them using low power
around the home.
They would have to make sure that whatever use the expect to make from
"broadcasting" on these channels can cope with this.

Yet every time I use my VCR, I wish I could physically put
one of these £60 FreeView boxes inside it (in place of the tuner) and
continue to use it as now, but with 30 digital channels instead of 5
analogue ones.

Maybe sometime soon someone will see the light and start selling low-end
VCR's & 14 inch TV's with the Freeview adaptor built in. I imagine these
would be very popular. The price of Freeview adaptors is still falling (£60)
and the add-on cost is bound to be less (£45?) than the cost of a seperate
adaptor, so the prices could be very attractive.
What would be even better would be one of those 5 inch screen LCD TV's from
Maplin with a Freeview adaptor built in. This would be the first
multichannel flat screen portable TV, and given the tendency for Freeview to
work with "a piece of bent wire" would, in many locations, probably work
better than it does on analogue which, don't forget, was never designed to
be picked up on a telescopic rod antenna either, but that has never stopped
portable TV's from selling.