HDTV / HD programming gap gets slimmer, still significant
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 11th 2008 4:20PM
posted Dec 11th 2008 4:20PM
We've always said that friends shouldn't let (real) friends buy HDTVs without HD programming, and it seems that some of you have taken this to heart. Just two years ago, some 40% of HDTV-owning US households had not bothered to subscribe to any form of high-def programming. Today, In-Stat is reporting that said figure has stooped to 18%. Sure, the drop is fairly dramatic, but that still proves that nearly 1 in 5 HDTV-equipped homes probably aren't even enjoying HDTV content. The top two reasons consumers gave for not buying were that they simply "weren't interested" or that HD channels were "too expensive." Funny -- just a few years back, the main excuse was "not enough content," and now that content isn't the issue, we've moved on to complaining over cost. Granted, this doesn't take into account OTA HD viewing, Blu-ray watching or HD streaming, but we'd certainly love to have that information in future studies.
I own an HDTV and use only OTA simply because there's nothing on cable I'm interested in watching, so I see no reason to subscribe to it.
Cable is too expensive, but it isn't because of the 40 or 50 HD channels, it's because of the 250 SD channels that I don't watch and the 75 music channels that I don't listen to that I also have to buy.
I have 3 HDTV's and subscribe to no cable service whatsoever. I get roughly 25 channels free OTA, have a blu-ray equipped Netflix account, and lots of HD content available online.
I don't have the TIME, forget the money, to watch any more HD content than that.
How much longer until we can live in a day and age when HD is standard? Like when color became standard over black & white.
A co-worker just got a new 1080p set. He says it has a "beautiful picture". Of course, he must be watching in "Stretch-o-Vision" because he hasn't had his cable package upgraded to HD yet.
May be he is watching clear QAM network channels!
QAM? This is a guy who called Sony tech support to ask them where the "@" key on his VAIO keyboard was located.
Just today I was talking to a co-worker about her family's new HDTV. She remarked that news anchors now "have a bit of a weight problem," which tells me that the family is watching the news in stretch-o-vision. Aside from the fact that three of the four news channels in our DMA are doing HD news, I feel compelled to invite myself over to her house to "fix" their problem of essentially no HD content on their beautiful TV.