With Michael Phelps spending a great deal of time in front of the cameras between 8:00PM and midnight ET each night, it's hardly a shock to hear that USers are tuning into the Olympics like its 1976. According to preliminary numbers, NBC Universal is reporting that an average of 29.1 million viewers are flipping on the Olympics, which is the "most highly rated broadcast of the Summer Games held outside the United States since 1976." When seeing figures like this, the obvious question emerges: why? Contrary to the beliefs of Big Media, the internet is actually somewhat to thank. Many believed that internet broadcasting would whittle down TV ratings, when in fact, it seems that quite the opposite has happened. Interestingly, it appears that all the high-def footage really isn't getting the credit it deserves. Be honest -- would you have stayed up until 1:00AM watching men's gymnastics had it not been in HD?

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For those who thought that fishing on TV was dead as soon as ESPN cut it out in large part from its NFL-slanted coverage, Outdoor Channel would like to politely inform you that you're wrong. Dead wrong. According to the numbers, ratings for the network's Friday night fishing block increased 77% over the first half of 2007. Needless to say, the bulk of programming found in this segment is shot and aired in high-def, and just to make sure onlookers stay hooked, the channel will be adding in The Catch: Costa Rica and Fly Fishing the World (both captured in high-definition) in Q3. Anyone here helping to boost those ratings? Don't be shy now.

We'll admit -- we had serious doubts that 3D cinema would ever take off so long as patrons were forced to wear those gaudy glasses, but the opening weekend numbers for Journey To The Center Of The Earth make a good case that 3D is viable. In a release put out by Real3D, we're told that 55% of the box office revenue generated by the film was handed over by guests watching it in the third-dimension. In short, the Real3D version took in "3.7 times the revenue of the 2D alternative." It should be noted, however, that 3D viewings are generally more expensive than traditional screens, so we can't say with any degree of certainty that more people saw the film in 3D than in 2D. Still, this seems like a pretty big deal in the 3D arena to us, and we're sure it's all the motivation some studios needed to move forward with costly 3D endeavors.

Life's good in Bristol -- at least it sure looks that way based on reports stemming from The Cable Show in New Orleans and the latest Nielsen data. For starters, primetime viewership on ESPN grew 15%, while total day ratings ratcheted up 13%. According to Sean Bratches, executive vice president of sales and marketing for the outfit, ESPN's ratings were 43% higher in high-definition homes versus standard-definition homes, reiterating that sports and movies are the two biggest draws of owning an HDTV. Needless to say, the news simply means that the network can demand even more for precious ad time, but we won't even pretend you didn't see that coming.

Not that this is a surprise or anything -- after all, it's pretty safe to assume that homes with HD became that way due to an urge to watch more HD programming -- but some recent ratings numbers from Nielsen help substantiate the notion that high-def capable domiciles are more likely to flip on the set. For instance, this year's Super Bowl managed a 43.3 rating overall, yet racked up a 47.6 rating in homes with HDTVs. Additionally, broadcast TV stations had an 8.9 rating in HD homes in December of 2007, while non-HD households rung up just a 6.8 rating. Still, not all of the news was rosy. At the close of last year, about a quarter of US homes had an HD set, while just 13.6-percent of those were classified as "HD capable and receivable." SD content stretched across an HD panel? Oh, the humanity.

[Via MultichannelNews]

In case you've been camped out under the nearest boulder for the past few weeks, WWE has officially transitioned to high-definition, but the change most certainly didn't come cheap. Reportedly, the outfit is finishing up a $20 million conversion of its production facilities at its Stamford, Connecticut headquarters, and in the meanwhile, it's using new HD technology for broadcasts out of a temporary location in the same city. Furthermore, the WWE has constructed all new sets and two new production trucks, and while the company seems quite pleased with the results, the general public hasn't exactly responded. According to David Meltzer, editor and publisher of Wrestling Observer, ratings have yet to jump from the move to HD, but as Michael White, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities puts it, WWE "almost needed this investment to keep [its] core fan base excited." Yeah -- who wants to watch sweat drop from ridiculously built bodies in SD, anyway?

[Image courtesy of BroadcastEngineering]

Considering the subjective nature of any "best of" list, it's always enjoyable to toss out results and watch onlookers pick apart the decisions. That being said, we're thrilled to have yet another list of winners at our disposal, this one crafted by the folks over at UltimateAVmag .com. The highlights include JVC's DLA-HD1 as projector of the year, Sony's 70-inch KDS-70XBR2 as RPTV of the year, Revel's $35K Ultima2 Studio2 System as speaker setup of the year and Onkyo's TX-SR875 as AV receiver of the year. In an interesting move, Sony's PlayStation 3 was chosen as disc player of the year due to its "speed and reliability," and Toshiba's HD-A30 took home budget product of the year honors. The standout victor in all of this was Pioneer's PDP-6010 KURO plasma, which isn't at all surprising considering the reviews. Granted, this isn't the first time a Pioneer PDP has grabbed the gold in similar competition, but this particular model snagged flat-panel of the year and product of the year medals on its way down the red carpet. For the complete rundown, be sure and tag the read link, and don't hesitate to throw in your two pennies below.

JD Power and Associates has released the findings of their 2007 Large Screen HDTV Usage and Satisfaction Survey, and there are some very familiar names in the winners of the three categories. As judged on overall satisfaction, picture and sound performance, ease of use, features and styling, the HDTVs were then divided into 37- to 49-inch, 50- to 65-inch and rear projection 50- 72-inch ranges. Sony's BRAVIA LCD line took the smaller category with a five out of five rating in every area, but lost out to Pioneer's plasmas when competition went over 50-inches. Samsung's DLPs won the rear projection award, despite having a lower picture and sound rating than Sony, JVC, and Toshiba. Take a look at the overall results and then let us know how you think your HDTV measures up.

While the amount of HD exclusive channels continues to (slowly) grow, it was Mark Cuban's own HDNet and HDNet Movies that took home the gold in the "first high-definition TV ratings" acquired by TNS Media Research. The data was gathered from set-top-boxes in an unnamed "major market," and the two channels were said to "excel in both weekday and weekend" ratings. For the week ending July 1st, the channels held between 6.1-percent and 8.6-percent of the viewers that were tuned into 100-percent HD channels, which simply leaves us to wonder what the other 90 or so percent of eyes were watching so intently.

[Via BlogMaverick]

Okay, so we're not waxing rhapsodic about a conspiracy theory just yet, but seriously, why can't the general public get a few hard numbers regarding the HD DVD / Blu-ray format war? Since both formats hit the market, we've all been wondering who would be the leader in terms of disc sales once the holiday season was behind us, and although Nielsen VideoScan has finally loosed the deets, we're still (relatively) in the dark. We've wondered exactly what was taking so long for these data to surface, but instead of VideoScan perfecting their report, it has apparently delayed the information only to release several inconclusive "charts" and "ratios" that, quite frankly, aren't what we all want. For whatever it's (not) worth, it looks like Blu-ray titles outsold HD DVD titles by a 2:1 margin during the admittedly slow first two weeks of 2007, but overall, we're still stuck analyzing Amazon's sales figures while trying to piece together the truth. Still, if you're more interested in having the best of both worlds regardless of which is on top (or still around) in a couple years, you know where to go.

[Thanks, Jed]