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Heres my 2 cents worth. Consider the work in setting up a rig from scratch. You have to source all the gear. The set it up. Polar alingment is a very important part of that, especialy for portable setups, but even in fixed observatories it still has to be done when it is first set up. Collimation, accurate focus, locating the objects and so on. A failure in just one of these processes can ruin efforts to obtain good images.
In remote imaging all of these things have been done for you. Yes, you need to decide what object to image, perhaps adjust the framing of it, and decide what LRGB image length and numbers to take, and then process them. But seeing all the setting up of the gear is done for you, it may be fair to have a separate remote imaging section, where remote imagers can compete on a level playing field, and a DSLR imaging section, where DSLR imagers can also compete on a level field.
Remote imaging, though it doesnt involve buying such superexpensive gear, is necessarily costly on a per hour basis as
1 the initial purchase /setup costs of the observatories are so high, they need to be defrayed by charging enough per/hour
2 to get the best benefit from these high quality scopes/mounts, one may as well go very deep, several hours per object, hence a high cost per object
Scott
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