Blu-ray player and flat planel tv

[Gamekid]

Since the first blu-ray players will be about $1000.00 at launch time, then I suppose that the players will then drop down in price after a year or so. $1000.00 seems really expensive to pay. I've heard that in 2009, all analog tv signals will be gone due to an law placed by Congress. Is this true? Not to sound nasty, but what makes Congress think that everybody will have a flat planel tv by that time? It's true that most people have broadband of some sort in their homes as it's beating out dial up by over 50%. However, even at this point, dial up isn't totally gone. Not to offend anyone on this forum, but some people have dial up now as opposed to what they could have. Anyway, it seems like the blu-ray player launch would also lower flat planel tv's as the price for even a 30 incher is well beyond $500.00. Why exactly are flat planel tv's so expensive in the first place? I can understand that you can't exactly make a 30 inch flat panel and put on a $100.00 price tag on it. I'd think that the high price tag would be the result of the type of parts used and the fact that most of our electric gear is made outside of the united states.

[Blue]

DVD Players were over $1000 at launch - now a $40 player has more features and most probably a longer time before failure than the first DVD players - expect the same with Blu Ray - even before the launch there have been prices with about a 20% discount advertised, prices wll drop to just below that of HD-DVD VERY fast.
Analog TV signals around the world (western countries) will be switched off within the next 4 or so years. If you don't want to replace your tv just get a set top box, by the time the change over occurs they will be very cheap.
I would expect blu ray to drive the up take of HD TV's and hence price drop of flat panel TV's and vice versa.

I'm not really sure what your comment re dial up is refering to, Blu ray does not require internet access, however some special features will be available (if anyone thinks I'm going to connect my player to the internet - they can think again as I won't be)
As for price and where things are made I can't comment, as I live in Australia, but I would assume it's cheaper making things in Mexico etc or the companies wouldn't do it (social and company morals - is way out of scope for this forum).

[Gamekid]

About the dial up, I meant that dial up isn't completly gone. I mean I use AOL as my ISP and I can use dial up, but I prefer cable modem. It seems like Congress is saying to everyone "Get an flat panel tv by 2009 or your CRT tvs won't work anymore" Some people may not want to get a flat panel tv so Congress should say "Get a flat panel tv by 2009, if you don't, your CRT tvs will still work. I really don't know if anyone will even have a CRT tv by 2009, but then again, some people will. It just seems to me like what Congress is stating it more of a threat then a message. I don't object to it at all, but it seems to me like Congress should cut us some slack instead of giving us no choice.

[The Don]

I thought the analog signal would be gone this year...

and they aren't restricting you to a flat panel TV....we already have LCD TV's that are 250.00...

[JTK]

Don't worry about it. Haven't you noticed how Congress keeps pushing that analog cutoff deadline back several years at the drop of a hat?

[thunderhawk]

Here in the EU, all analog broadcasting should be gone in 2009.
It orginally was sooner too...

[Blue]

In Australia the date keeps slipping to switch off analog (I think about 2009) - but I have a very nice Panasonic 20 year old CRT in my bedroom and it hasn't had an analog free to air picture on it for over a year - well it's eventually analog after it comes out of the PVR /Set top box and RF converter. Set top box's seem to be droping every month and in reality should be much cheaper than a DVD player as the electronics are about the same both have Power supply, MPEG2 Decoder, DD/DTS Decoder and converter to Toslink or coax. The only difference is Set Top box has a tuner and tuner control (a few cheap electronic parts) vs motors and mechanical mechanisims for the DVD and lasers to read it. It's much easier and quicker to put some electronic components on a ciruit board than to build a mechanical device.
As for dail up it's great for people that only get or send a couple of emails a week and look at a couple of web sites - then there are people like me where 1.5Mb/s is TOO slow. Dial up has a place and is not impacting anyone - they want to use the analog spectrum for other radio activities so they need to stop analog.