We don't like cheap boxes

I just read an article on the Media Guardian website with the headline "BBC Attacked for pushing Freeview", the premise of the article is that a certain group are unhapy that the Beeb are pushing the cheaper option of Freeview and the £50 and you're done boxes instead of much more expensive integrated sets and pvr/dvd recorders.

They claim that by pushing the cheaper option the BBC are somehow taking choice and opportunity away from the consumer - bollocks!

Which group are annoyed about this I hear you cry? None other than Intellect, the trade body for electronics manufacturers including Philips and Sony, no vested interest there then.

Laurence Harrison, the consumer electronics director at Intellect, said: "We feel very strongly that the BBC should be focusing more on widening consumer choice, rather than taking consumers down the narrow road of the set-top box and the £50 option."

Consumers will choose

The BBC are getting the digital message to the 'refusenicks' those people that won't have digital tv on the grounds that they shouldn't have to pay extra for something they already get.

Firstly sod-em, tv moves on, the world moves on and whether you like it or not there is a little thing called progress and sometimes we do things differently.

But that isn't what I wanted to say, just a point of contention for me, what I wanted to say was that the BBC isn't there to help advertise expensive 'luxury' products of the big corporations, the BBC is there to help people understand the benefits of freeview and the best way of doing this is making it as simple and cheap as possible.

Work to the lowest common denominator and you often catch a lot more. Work to the highest and you drop most.

The large corporations should see what the BBC are doing as a good thing, they get people interested, wet their appetites with the extra channels and the cheap box, then Intellects members can set about advertising appropriatly to get these adopters to buy their 'upgrades', free commerce and capitalism with a hint of social responsibility - wonderful!

A spokeswoman for the BBC said the corporation had emphasised Freeview because some consumers believe that receiving digital TV transmissions requires a new set or a pay-TV contract.

That comment sums it up really.

Source: Media Guardian

RELATED LINKS:

• Freeview
• Media Guardian
• BBC
• Intellect