Quote:
Originally Posted by andy
I agree. The $40 coupons have probably added at least $30 to the price of the boxes. If they can sell them in the UK for as little as $25-$30 (even with their higher sales tax), then they shouldn't be $50-$70 here. The coupons are also forcing them to dumb down the boxes by eliminating features like QAM tuning, component video, digital audio, and HD output. For $60 they should be able to output full HD. The chips used in these boxes are already capable of many of those features, but they are turned off in software.
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That may be due more to patent royalties than the subsidy.
Supposedly, one Chinese manufacturer complained that the royalty for an American ATSC set was about $20 USD, versus about $2 USD for digital sets sold in the EU.