[YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS] [TODAY’S DATE] Ms Julie Flynn, CEO Free TV Australia, First Floor, 44 Avenue Road, Mosman NSW 2088. contact@freetv.com.au Re: Australian Electronic Program Guide Ms Flynn, I am writing to you to tell you how angry I am with the way Free TV and the Australian TV networks are handling the development of digital television in this country. I bought into digital TV early on and for years now I've been waiting for some return on my investment. At first it was a total waste of time. There was simply nothing but the same programs on DTV as there was on analogue. The stations are finally putting some effort into making DTV worth having by offering a choice of programming, but the lack of a decent TV guide makes finding the programs I want to watch very difficult. My device allows me to use a guide to record TV, a great advance over VCRs and G Codes . Unfortunately I've never had anything even close to a half decent program guide. The "now" and "next" information that was originally broadcast was useless for scheduling. It is welcome that most stations are now broadcasting a 7-day guide that my device can receive, but the quality of the guide is, unfortunately, rather abysmal. Half the stations list everything in uppercase, the shows never start or finish on time and it's nearly impossible to use my digital TV devices the way I'm supposed to be able to. On top of that I've been told that very soon using the guide on my recorder will be illegal because it doesn’t ‘comply’ with some absurd limitations your organisation wants to impose on hardware. Are you seriously trying to restrict my right as a consumer to choose what products I can buy to access television freely broadcast on a publicly-owned resource? Do you want people like me to watch digital TV or not? Overseas these problems do not exist. The broadcasters have taken a mature approach and everyone benefits. Why can't the same thing be done here? Free-to-air TV is broadcast for the people and the bandwidth it's broadcast on is owned by the people and licensed to the stations. How dare you and the stations in your group try and restrict what I can watch and which device I can watch it on. If you think there's any way I'll go out and buy a Channel 7 Tivo or any other device you are pushing just so I can use a guide to get FTA television then you are sadly mistaken. I'd rather just watch my DVDs, or find alternative sources of content. I find it incredible that I can pick up TV week or any old newspaper and find out what is on and when, but you insist that I can’t do this digitally using modern, readily-available equipment. What's the point in supplying an electronic guide if it's useless to 98% of the population? Honestly, is this any way for a company to treat its customers in a civilised society? Can you please take some action and ensure that: 1. The guide data is delivered FREE of charge. 2. The guide data is delivered in formats suitable for mainstream devices currently on the market (this includes those capable of receiving EIT data and those capable of downloading guide data via the Internet). 3. The guide data is accurate with respect to start and end times of broadcasts. 4. The guide data is updated in a timely fashion, at least every 24 hours, reflecting modifications to scheduled programming. 5. The guide data has at a minimum 7 full days of information at all times. 6. The guide data is delivered in a quality at least comparable to those available in printed media. With specific reference to case (not all capitals) and spelling. 7. That the naming of titles follows a specific convention from week to week and does not change frequently. 8. That the programming contained within the guide is appropriately categorised and adheres to the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice. Please write back to me and let me know how you will be correcting these obvious, but easily fixed, issues I’ve raised. Yours Sincerely, [YOUR NAME]