Almost Half of HDTV Owners Don’t Use HDTV

Telecom News Editorials Reports Glossary

6:55 am on April 6, 2008 | Category: Business, Television

HD-enabled television sets are all the rage these days, but HD programming itself hasn’t yet picked up to the same extent, according to an online survey by ABI Research.

As of December 2007, 41% of U.S. TV owners had a high-definition TV set, but only 56% of these had subscribed to any kind of HDTV service.

“Pay-TV operators need to close this gap by highlighting what HDTV owners without a HD package are missing out on,” commented Cesar Bachelet, a senior analyst at ABI Research.

The survey also discovered that only a small percentage of users possess Digital Video Recorders.

“Alliances with games console manufacturers (IPTV through Xbox 360) could represent a significant opportunity for online content/ gaming services,” Bachelet predicted.

Interest in most “next generation” TV services, meanwhile, is mostly limited to younger viewers, with the exception of the ability to view PC content on a TV screen, which generates interest in a range of age groups.

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post.

“As of December 2007, 41% of U.S. TV owners had a high-definition TV set, but only 56% of these had subscribed to any kind of HDTV service.”

Hasn’t the author of this article ever heard of BROADCAST television? Maybe the other 59% are smart enough to watch television for free instead of paying $50/month for it!

Comment by Randolph Joseph Milller — April 6, 2008 #
This story only references people who subscribe to an HDTV service. Do they count the people that get HDTV from their local TV stations over the air as not getting HDTV? A second issue is the fact that you can get HDTV for many local stations from most cable systems with only a basic cable subscription. Most digial sets can display non-encrypted high definition digital cable programming after a channel search if the cable is connected to the HDTV’s antenna input.

Comment by Rory Boyce — April 6, 2008 #