The Leichtman Research Group is back again, with its sixth annual study on all things HDTV, extrapolating from a 1,302 household survey that the number of homes with an HDTV has reached 40 million. Overall, HDTV penetration has crossed a third of households, up to 34% from 20% last year, while those with an HDTV set who thought they were watching HD, but actually weren't, dropped slightly to 18%. Also less than pleasing to our eye is the finding that just a 1% increase from last year in the number of customer reporting they were told how to get high definition programming, but the percentage of homes watching HD jumped 5 points to 58%. The read link has a few more numbers for those seeking their yearly update, but we're already wondering how things will read next year.

Another day, another analyst report. We like this one from the Leichtman Research Group because it addresses the topic of in-home HD as a whole. Skipping past the format war, display technologies and content providers, we get a picture of how well HD is doing in the marketplace. The result is a mixed bag. First, the good news: about 25% of U.S. households have a least one TV capable of receiving HD (we assume to most respondents that equates to "displaying HD"), doubling the percentage from a year ago. Now, the bad news: 1) 20% of HDTV owners who think they are watching HD broadcasts are actually not; 2) only 41% of HDTV owners were told how to receive HD broadcasts when they purchased their set; and 3) about 40% of HDTV owners believe they have an HDM player, which is larger than the number of HDM players sold to date. So it would seem CE manufacturers, content distributors, publishers and retailers all have some consumer education to do. Once the "early-ish" adopters have made the jump to HD, the reasons to switch to HD have to be clear, and the path to HD has to be nice-and-easy; otherwise consumer satisfaction sinks, and we all know where that can lead!