Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version VT1.00C 11/1/84; site vortex.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!vortex!lauren From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: satellite netnews costs Message-ID: <466@vortex.UUCP> Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 18:16:52 EST Article-I.D.: vortex.466 Posted: Tue Dec 11 18:16:52 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 14-Dec-84 05:02:19 EST Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles Lines: 69 For God's sake. Some people just LOVE to knock things, don't they? First of all David, I haven't made a dime on this project. Nor is it terribly likely that I ever will. If someday I manage to get some reimbursement for my time or some additional consulting that'll be great, but I have no way to expect that. I've been donating all my time and efforts to this project, as have various other people, not to mention Usenix which has been paying expenses and the WTBS satellite carrier who is giving us free satellite time for the experiment. As for costs, we're not talking about hacked-together toys here. We're talking about commercial equipment made by large firms who aren't in business for their health. The equipment that people buy now for this kind of vertical interval decoding costs close to $1000 OR MORE, for video input. These things simply aren't in the kind of mass production that could bring things down to consumer levels, and there is a lot of complexity that goes far beyond the more ordinary "teletext magazine" decoders. The fact that the end-user cost, including markups along the way, may get as low as $500, including demod, has amazed the industry people who have been working in this field all along. The companies making the equipment (NOT ME -- I'm not selling these things) either make money on the products or they will not build them. Custom chips are involved to handle the decoding and decryption, by the way. Once again, we are NOT talking toys here, we are talking national broadcasting over the largest non-sports basic cable service in the world -- WTBS. The actual breakdown for the (hoped-for) $500 cost is about $130 for a very nice RF/video demod (direct tuning for cable channels with all the special filtering and tuning circuits required for the very delicate teletext tuning) and about $370 for the actual decoder with RS232 output. That's about 1/2 the price of anything available today, and even this price is at risk unless there is sufficient demand to drive the manufacturing. Only recently has enough demand seemed to appear. The additional buffering hardware would basically include CPU, lots of memory, interfaces, power supply, and similar items. Individually, such items aren't that expensive. But by the time you get someone to make the PC boards and assemble the units into cases and stock them, you're talking a couple of hundred bucks (I'm hoping for $150-$200, but there's no way to know for sure at this point since we don't know who would do the manufacturing and on what terms) even if you're not interested in making any profit on them. While it's nice to be able to play around sometimes, and while some people are willing to donate their time to such projects, we can't force EVERYONE to be so altruistic and do everything for free. The people working with the project right now have no way of knowing that we'll ever see a cent in terms of time reimbursement, but we're happy to do the work anyway because it's a good cause. I'm hoping that the effective costs of decoders and demods can be reduced to the end user even further through rental/buyback rather than purchases if that can be made possible. HOWEVER, if the network community doesn't like the way the project is going, I will give the satellite people a call, tell them to pull the plug on stargate, and then I'll even have more time to work on projects that can help me pay this month's rent. What say you, oh entities of the net? Please post to this group. Thanks much. --Lauren--