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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Stargate Questions
Message-ID: <6928@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 12-Jul-86 20:22:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6928
Posted: Sat Jul 12 20:22:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jul-86 20:22:50 EDT
References: <355@omen.UUCP> <6858@utzoo.UUCP> <1005@im4u.UUCP>, <192@pwcs.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 23

> ...To-date, I haven't been able to get ANY real info
> about what costs might be involved for the 'blackbox', etc. I
> can't really get them to go with a project that has an unknown
> cost factor...

If you expect a written quotation, I suspect you're just going to have to
wait until the current round of negotiations is finished.  Rough numbers
can be derived from Lauren's previous public utterances.  (I have no
special inside information.)  If the cable company gets WTBS, they already
have the signal on their premises; if not, they'll need dish and receiver,
which they should be able to price themselves.  That would suffice to send
the existing signal out to their customers.  It's not clear why they would
need any more than that.  If they decode the stuff themselves, they would
then presumably have to re-encode it to get it to the customers.  This
seems a bit pointless.

Lauren has mentioned costs of $500 for decoder and maybe $200 for buffer
box in the past.  There is a possibility that the hardware would be
available only on a rental basis.  There's also probably going to be some
sort of subscription fee, since there will be real costs involved in
running the service.  If the result is going to be significantly cheaper
than current approaches, the fee would probably have to be at most hundreds
a year.  If it gets up into four digits the market will drop dramatically.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry