Brazilian STB to cost more than US$350

A report on a Brazil-based website quotes the president of the National Association of Manufacturers of Electronic Products as saying that the first set-top boxes to be used for terrestrial DTV in Brazil will be priced at around BRL 700, which equates to around US$ 380 or €UR 270 at today's rates. He attributes this high price to the fact that volumes will not be high enough to make prices fall - in fact, he doesn't expect prices to fall until five years after services launch.

Of course none of this should be surprising - the Brazilians chose to adopt the Japanese ISDB-T system and create their own local variant of it, called SBTVD. The Japanese system isn't used anywhere other than Japan, which means it doesn't benefit from the economies of scale that DVB-T (or even ATSC) does. (A basic DVB-T STB has been available recently for about €UR 15 in the UK!)

It looks like the average Brazilian person is going to have to postpone joining the DTV revolution until well into the next decade.