The world has gone High Def crazy but we're still missing HD broadcasts to watch on our shiny new panels, according to a new report by Research and Markets.
In the US, there are more than 39 million households with an installed HDTV set. However, only 22 million of those actually receive and watch HD programming.
That means nearly 45 per cent of people bought a HD Ready or Full HD set without anything to watch on it.
The Consumer Electronics Association says last Sunday's Super Bowl showdown alone will stimulate another 2.6 million HDTV sales in the year ahead.
High time for High Def?
Worldwide, it's a similar story. Although the number of HD households increased 25 per cent in 2008 - and is expected to grow a further 30 per cent in the recession year of 2009 - there are still just 36 million households in the world with both HD kit and HD programmes to watch.
Europe has been particularly slow to pick up the HD trend - it will be 2011 before we have 10 million HD households across the entire continent.
That's partly because cable and satellite companies still provide over 80 per cent of HD TV broadcasts worldwide, with terrestrial broadcasters still struggling with the challenges of upgrading to HD.
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gavin
February 4th 2009
3. One problem people don't think about is the amount of places int he UK which are unable to get both SKY/FreeSat and Cable, for example I live in Bath, and because 70% of the city is grade listed buildings they are unable to dig up the road or even put up a dish.
I am reduced to Freeview and sky on my laptop via the Sky Player service for a stupidly unreasonable price (£33 a month for about 10 channels).
maybe BT Vision would be a good choice...but no I would prefer to stick to my 24MB Be connection than switch to the terrible service from BT just to get IPTV.
All services need to made available to all methods of receiving, otherwise HDTV will not be wide spread anytime soon.
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tyranter
February 4th 2009
2. nail on head there. this really is the crux of the matter. price for the kit/subscription and the amount of content available. BBC HD is great when its actually on and has (new) content. How many repeats are there?! Live at the Apollo week after week and Electric proms week after week is rubbish (!) even some of the new natural world stuff they have isnt in HD. whats the point?!
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jmace86
February 3rd 2009
1. I do wish that broadcasting services would keep up with current technology and do do so at a reasonable price.
Sky HD needs to be cheaper.
Freesat HD needs to have more HD content (and the PVR version of the Freesat HD box should be cheaper).
Freeview needs to hurry up and get into HD.
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