More news from 2012: 100 million US households to pay for HD programming

Alright, so it was mildly humorous at first -- now it's just downright freaky. For the fourth time in just a few months, a report is emerging that forecasts numbers for 2012. Not 2011, not 2013, just 2012. Nevertheless, the latest research doled out by Pike & Fischer asserts that "up to 103 million households will be paying their multichannel video provider for some form of HD service or rental equipment" by 2012. As it stands, around 47 million US homes will be coughing up for HD programming by the end of 2008, which should be a 17 million domicile increase from 2007 if everything goes as predicted. Needless to say, we've no doubts that HD consumption has nowhere to go but up, but even we are taken aback by the $2.6 billion in annual revenue that content providers are expected to garner in just four short years.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 18th 2008 11:42AM]

Why won't everything be in HD by then anyway? Seriously, what's taking everyone so long? I've had an HDTV since 2002 and it's shocking how little HD content even DTV has.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 18th 2008 3:37PM]

Cost, Efectiveness, Price. Replacing (almost) all your cameras like ESPN has done, isn't cheap. Also its mostly because alot of stations don't see the need to do so. That's why the federal goverment stepped in with the DTV by 2009 and the extra cash the goverment will make off of it helped them decide that too.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 18th 2008 12:55PM]

What's worse is it's going to take that 100, million three years after the transition to digital tv in 2009 that they will pay for HD. When Stations stop broadcasting analog channels, chances are all the networks will stop providing analog to multichannel providers, leaving them to have to pass the hd channel on in one form or another.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 18th 2008 4:18PM]

This really pisses me off. I annoys me to no end that Directv charges extra for HD programming and extra to get football games in HD (on top of sunday ticket, you need to get Superfan to get the HD games).

Eventually everything will be HD, and most football games already are, so to me, it's the equivalent of paying extra to get a color picture.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 24th 2008 8:44AM]

thats bold... and extraordinarily inept/doubtful. Let look at the more believable scenario, like how much of it will likely be INCIDENTAL.... most people now have got HD programming (part of their cable package) but rarely watch/make use of it. Lots of sheeple will buy high end (HD) electronic products w/o really ever understanding/using it to its potential... and will still continue to feed on whats most commonly offered