I just read a report that 25 million households have HD television sets. Which actually suprised me.. I expected the figure to be much lower. Then I read on. The report goes further to say only about 10 million of those sets are fed HD programming. 9.8 million seems more reasonable a figure to me. They state some of the people just purchased the TV because even SD programming looks better on it. Many weren’t willing to pay the extra monthly fees to get HD programming. I feel there are other issues as well…

Many people dont realize that even in small markets, a $50 conversion box will get them OTA (over the air) HD freely broadcast from their local networks. Some may already have converters built into the TV. Of course if the person has cable, It is a chore to switch to OTA but its there for them.

I was recently at a local Walmart and they had a display of 4 large HD TVs in a display and they were all being fed by a $20 DVD player! Not even an upsizing one. Anyone buying the TV on the strength of the display alone will be just buying it because the pricepoint is good for such large TVs. Not because of the HD potential. (The DVD in the player was an awful quality homemade Walmart promo DVD.)

HD wont take off until 1.) Bluray players are reasonable. And I dont mean reasonable for what they can do, but reasonable compared to DVD. I dont think people will ever see they are 4x better and be willing to pay 4x as much. Price will have to be comparable to DVD. 2) People are forced to DTV in 2009. They will get HD without asking for it. 3) Studios just stop releasing SD content. This wont happen until 1 does however.

What are your thoughts?

source  http://broadcastengineering.com/hdtv/hd-…)