Smart box / Dumb box

Hi,

The smart box sounds good. I would like one. Alas, I can't afford one. I
don't expect that to change. The existing smart box type products are
all very expensive. They need to be. I don't think we can change that
enough to make any real difference.

A smart box design effort would be a very large project. The market for
this sort of thing is not that large. It follows then, that a large
development expense (NRE) will have to be amortized over a small number
of units. This requires a large per unit gross margin. The existing
products of this type seem to validate this.

If someone wants to develop a smart box for free and let us all build
our own for the cost of the parts I'd be happy to jump on that
bandwagon. I not holding my breath, though.

Jeff