15% of American homes have a HDTV
By Matt Burns 
posted Sep 22nd 2005 11:57AM
posted Sep 22nd 2005 11:57AM
There is a study that is floating around the Internet about the number HDTV’s there are worldwide. Do you know that the US has 58% of the global market share? We beat out Japan with 16.5 million high def sets. Anyways, I plugged in some numbers and this is what I came up with.
15% of the 107(+/-) million households in America have a HDTV. This seems about right. I can only think of three of my friends that have a high-def. 83% of Americans have cable or satellite so there is nothing requiring these tens of millions households to make the switch.
Still there are going to be a few million households that are not going to be prepared for the switch to ATSC in 2006 or 2009. Ironically, my mother is one of them. She has an antenna that is from the seventies and plans on using it as long as she can. I can see her getting plasma in a few years, with ATSC of course, but she is not alone in resisting to paying for TV. The picture quality a person can receive of ATSC is better then cable or satellite in many cases, so why pay for it? Many people, including my mother, do not want to buy a new TV if she does not have too just yet.
I am sure that a few of our readers that are hesitant on buying a HDTV if their current TV is working fine. Care to sound off why?
My parents have three (yes, three!) HDTVs, and plan on getting a fourth! I'm seriously considering moving back in with them. I mean, lots of grown people live with their parents, right?
Why spend the money on a HDTV? I purchased a 51 inch HDTV just because that was what was available in that size and signed up for HD service 2 weeks ago. When my trial ends I'll be cancelling the service. No major improvement in detail as far as I can tell, just a cleaner signal. Using analog cable I'm perfectly happy as long as it isn't the digital crap I'm getting from my cable company. I can't see anything new with HDTV, such as beads of sweat or anything with sports (not that I watch sports other than HD comparison)
Poor programming choices mean all of the shows I watch are still only available in SD except for Discovery HD with I have to pay extra for and has a completely different lineup so I don't know what is showing when.
Maybe in another couple years I"ll go back to HD but as of right now I'll keep my HDTV only for HD gaming with a console or my PC.