The 8008 650

They won't die until the digital ones have replaceable media at a quid for 3 hours. For as long as they live (and tvs have an analogue video signal), the copyright barons will just have to put up with home recording.

Initially they will be compatible, until there's sufficient market penetration for the pay-per-view and premium channels to insist on an all digital tv, with end to end encryption. Maybe recording will be allowed, on a pay-per-recording, and possibly pay-per-replay basis. (Unless you want to reverse engineer the x*10^n transistor chip in the display that decrypts and translates bits to pixels.) The rest of the market will follow.

I just don't trust those buggers. My "Freeview" digital box can have its software upgraded by an "over the air" update. The user instructions tell me that an upgrade could be optional, or mandatory. It's the only part of the instructions written in decent English. I don't want them downloading the equivalent of a virus-signature scanner and purging any hard disks of stuff they think shouldn't be there. For the same reason, I'm slowly replacing all Micros??t software here.

Regards,

David P.