Profit agenda

The consumer electronics industry both likes and dislikes the BBC's Freeview promotional push for various reasons. It likes the fact that the BBC's big Freeview push is forcing many people to at least think about digital TV, but the industry's main concern is that people are being steered towards the cheap box route as opposed to buying an expensive new TV for which there's lots more profit for the retailer and manufacturer.

It's very understandable why the BBC should choose to solely focus on one simple approach which happens to be the cheapest: check coverage area, buy a box, connect cables, plug it in and switch on. Mentioning anything else at the same time would risk muddying the water for technophobes and it's strongly arguable that an inexperienced person would anyway go to an electrical shop to seek advice.

But of course there's the equal danger that someone might pop a cheap Freeview box into their basket whilst shopping at their local Tesco's even if they were thinking about buying a new TV, but they might do that anyway for the TV of course. The real problem is that there are still relatively few TV's with Freeview 'built in', therefore manufacturers should address this situation first before complaining.

There is also a little-mentioned advantage to the integrated digital TV approach which is arguably very important. It's very tempting to leave a separate box permanently powered from the mains, but ultimately all those separate boxes would significantly add to the amount of electricity consumed in the UK compared with standalone TV's which are often switched off when not being viewed.