[mythtv-users] Just got my two $40 DTV coupons

Ronald Frazier ron at ronfrazier.net
Fri Mar 7 14:21:49 UTC 2008


> The NTIA aren't complete idiots, however, so they have made a concerted
> effort to make converter box coupons as unattractive as possible while still
> fulfilling their mandate.
>
> Thus, only DTV recievers which are crippled to NTIA spec are eligible for
> the coupon program.

Well, I'm not sure the whole thing is as insidious as you make it
sound. As far as I know, the idea of the $40 converter coupon wasn't
to give everyone a discount on the upgrade. The idea, as I understood
it, was that we needed to make sure nobody would be left behind in the
DTV upgrade. That meant specifically the people who couldn't afford
new equipment. I suspect that virtually 100% of the people who do
firewire capture to a computer, or have devices that accept optical
inputs, or have wireless networks, also have at least enough money to
not get left behind without access to television.

By prohibiting all of those features, you make taking advantage of the
program as unenticing as possible. As far as I know, the cheapest
approved converter is going for $50 at walmart (I don't believe there
are any $40 ones). So who's going to want to pay $10 for a device that
really provides them with zero functionality. Yet for those people
with TVs that are 20 years old because they can barely pay the bills
and buy food, much less upgrade their TV, they would be more than
happy to take advantage of the coupon.

I think the way the program was set up does a reasonable job of
achieving its goal. As with anything, there are flaws.

> What I am excited about, though, is the seamy geek driven gray market that
> will emerge.   Some manufacturer that has come up on the short end of the
> big box sweepstakes, but still has the capacity to make a DTV receiver for
> $15 is going to do something extremely cool.   For instance, they might add
> $5 to their BOM and  put a YPrPb output on a DB9 connector, or a SATA header
> and 16MB of flashable ROM on their circuit board, and sell it to *US* in
> exchange for our $40 coupons.

Yes, that was one of the flaws I had in mind...the geek market.
However, I doubt theres a lot you could do to discourage them. Even if
there weren't hidden features, I'm sure plenty of geeks would be
willing to snatch up the units at $10 to see if they could figure out
a way to do something interesting with it (I'm not sure whether I
actually will, but I've been planning to do so for just that reason).

-- 
Ron


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