"Significant gap" found between US HDTV ownership and HD programming usage

by Darren Murph posted Jan 26th 2009 at 4:02PM

Research firm In-Stat is back with updated numbers on the amount of HDTV owners / HD programming consumers there are in the US, and needless to say, there's still quite the gap. The most recent report points out that the "number of US HDTV households, defined as households having both an installed HD-capable TV set and also receiving and watching HD programming, increased by almost 40% in 2008." That said, the growth rate could have been much, much larger. In America, there are over 39 million homes with an installed HDTV, yet just 22 million of those are tuning into HD programming. From a worldwide perspective, we are glad to see that HDTV households rose from 29 million at year-end 2007 to 36 million at year-end 2008, though In-Stat does note that it'll likely be 2011 before Europe hits the magical 10 million mark in HDTV households. Per usual, even more figures are waiting in the read link.

Filed under: Industry

Tags: america, data, gap, hdtv, household, households, programming, research, survey, us, usa

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highest Ranked

jason @ Jan 26th 2009 4:23PM

This is where the providers need to stop charging extra for HD content. I thiiiink that might help, just a thought.

Neutral

ack154 @ Jan 26th 2009 4:38PM

That's one thing that I'm actually happy with Time Warner about... free HD service. Just swap your box and you're good to go.

Now... if we could just start getting a few more channels? Maybe ABC HD soon? How about Comedy Central HD?

Highly Ranked

Matt @ Jan 26th 2009 5:04PM

No kidding! Comcast charges through the nose if you want all a good amount of HD programing.

Neutral

GSR @ Jan 26th 2009 4:58PM

I agree with the comment about removing premiums for HD programming, however unlikely that really is. On the other hand, there are many shows I enjoy that are not being shot in HD for one reason or another. Once the price/convenience of filming HD drops, I expect that more channels will feel pressured to move to HD broadcast.

I wonder if the study counted folks who view HD content on their HDTV sourced from the internet? I imagine that I watch at least a few shows a week that way since I don't subscribe to any TV service.

Highly Ranked

Chris @ Jan 26th 2009 5:18PM

I have an HDTV. I watch almost ONLY HD shows, and guess what? NO HD PROGRAMMING! Digital HD antennae, Xbox 360 with HD downloaded video, streamed from my computer. Why pay with my first born to the service providers when I can get it for relatively cheap?

Neutral

Covarr @ Jan 26th 2009 5:31PM

This figure doesn't take into account HD video games or Blu-Ray.

Highest Ranked

Iridium @ Jan 26th 2009 5:51PM

Hi, I'm your cable company. If you want HD you'll have to subscribe to digital cable and pay for 300 channels you'll never watch. If you want HD you'll have to pay $10 extra for your cable box and a hidden access fee we stuff in your bill. Then we'll hide the HD version of the channels you want to watch somewhere between channel 540 and 752. Your basic cable, channels 1-99 will still be analog feeds rather than digital, the picture will be terrible. Also since we blew all of our bandwidth on pay per view garbage you'll have all kinds of picture hiccups and sound drops.

By the time we're done you'll be paying $100 a month to watch the handful of channels you care about. If you complain we'll give you 3 months of free HBO to make you feel better.

Neutral

h0mi @ Jan 26th 2009 7:06PM

And if you own a Tivo series 3 DVR, we will charge you $2-10 a month (depending on how many and which ones) for cable cards. You can expect your video quality to be fairly good, and then suddenly all digital channels go black, or maybe just not the broadcast channels. You have a QAM tuner in that tivo? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no cable for you. And tivo desktop will be useless for most content.

Oh and this doesn't include whatever you pay Tivo.

Neutral

ryaninc @ Jan 26th 2009 7:24PM

My inlaws have a nice 42" HDTV and they get lots of HD channels through Comcast, but it seems like every time we visit, they're watching an SD channel. Even if it's something like Discovery, they have the SD version. I've showed them a few times that there are two versions of the channel sometimes, but they still often watch the SD. I honestly think they just don't see the difference.

Personally, I get my HD over the air and it's excellent, not to mention free. :-)

Neutral

Jon @ Jan 27th 2009 1:31PM

If you had said a 37" HDTV and RCN as the cable provider I would have sworn you had my in-laws! Same damn thing.

Every time I am over I show them but the next time I am there, SD is on the HDTV. I think the biggest problem is where the channels are located. If Fox is channel 5 then they watch channel 5 when they want to see something on Fox, they don't think to turn to 193 or whatever convoluted channel the cable company put the HD Fox feed on. I've showed them how to bring just the HD channels up or set them as favorites, doesn't help. My cable provider does it right, all the HD channels aside from a handful are 5 + their basic cable channel, So the HD Fox feed is 505, ESPN SD is channel 24, ESPN HD is channel 524. Not to bad. God forbid my in-laws would ever have to use the digital tuner for clear QAM! I can't imagine explaining to them that the HD version of channel 5 is actually 113.2 or something like that.....

Neutral

jeremy @ Jan 26th 2009 10:30PM

yep. i have dish and signed up with an 18 month contract back in oct of 07. i called them last month to upgrade to their hd only package and they said it wasn't available to current customers only new customers... and $100 dollars for the hd reciever AND a new two year contract... i will be switching to direct as soon as our contract with dish is up. i'd rather fork out money to get a new set up with hd than give a company i already give money to screw me for more money.

Neutral

Kumar @ Jan 27th 2009 10:46AM

They also left off OTA HD programming. I've got a 42" 720p Sony, and I'm fine with the OTA for my HD prime time shows for now.

They seemed to only count cable and satellite HD programming. Hard to blame them, since most people are oblivious to the fact that you can hook up rabbit ears to your HDTV and get many local station's HD programming (like Lost tomorrow) for free.

Neutral

john b @ Jan 28th 2009 3:39AM

stop charging f....extra for hd channels,thats should take care of this problem.
and charge 15$ or less for new release blu-rays ,that would jump start bluray sales.

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