Despite the weakening economy here in the US and elsewhere, people are -- as predicted -- still showing interest in HDTV. Shortly after seeing what a nice Q2 the plasma sector had, DisplaySearch has revealed that TV shipments in general were way, way up in said quarter. In fact, North America saw the biggest year-over-year increase (28%) since the outfit started tracking TV shipments in 2004; then there's the 26% quarter-over-quarter growth, which is equally impressive. LCD TV shipments rose 52% compared to last year while PDP shipments shot up 34% in the same period, and it's safe to say that Samsung has the most to gloat about. It was the leading overall brand with shipments of its sets surging to a record 19.1% of all shipments in North America during Q2. Anxious to see who took the proverbial silver / bronze? Check out all of the stats in the read link below.

Oh, how quickly the mighty have fallen (again). Shortly after Matsushita dropped to third in plasma shipments in Q1, the outfit has leapfrogged both LG and Samsung SDI in order to claim the gold in Q2 2008. The outfit's revenue share skyrocketed from 29.4% to 36.8%, showing a 23% year-over-year improvement. Also of note, 1080p PDPs saw remarkable growth (54% year-over-year) this quarter, which were reportedly driven by sales of 46-inch models. Looking at Matsushita in particular, over 43% of its plasma shipments in Q2 were 1080p, and overall it "accounted for over 70% of all 1080p PDP shipments." Anyone taking bets on who comes out on top in Q3?

While Verizon was busy acquiring over a quarter-million new FiOS TV customers during Q1 2008, AT&T wasn't resting on its laurels. The company managed to pick up 148,000 new U-verse TV customers in the same period, pushing the 231,000 it ended 2007 with up to a new total of 379,000. Potentially more interesting is the firm's intentions to still hit the long-standing goal of netting a million subscribers before 2009 dawns, and as if that wasn't bold enough, it's looking to pass approximately 30 million living units by the end of 2010 (it's at 9 million now). Of course, we aren't discounting the company's ability to do so -- after all, it is rolling out service to a plethora of new locales at a pretty brisk rate -- but with the inability to record two HD channels at once, we can't see it really catching on until a few more limitations are lifted.

We already heard plenty of rosy news out of the Comcast camp, and generally speaking, the message is equally positive from DirecTV. Granted, the firm reported "only" $348 million in net income compared to $356 million a year earlier, but revenues managed to skyrocket some 17-percent. The reason, according to CNN Money, is the substantial uptick in demand for "more costly high-definition TV and digital recording features." Also of note, DTV hooked nearly half a million new subscribers in Q4 alone, and the monthly churn rate had dropped to 1.42-percent -- its "lowest in eight years." Consumers flocking to HD? Imagine that!

[Via Bloomberg]

Verizon isn't the only major cable provider walking with a bounce in its step in 2008, as Comcast's latest earnings report revealed that the company snagged 2.5 million new digital cable subscribers and $2.6 billion in net income during 2007. Also of note, it made sure we knew that 42-percent of its digital cable customers took advantage of "advanced services such as DVR and high-definition television" compared to 36-percent a year prior. Unfortunately, it failed to reveal exactly what percentage was subscribed addicted to HD programming, but we were told that pay-per-view revenue shot up 22-percent to a staggering $774 million in the last 12 months.

[Via Light Reading, image courtesy of Thermocaster]