Nielsen says that despite the recession, distribution of high-definition TVs continues to rise. As of February, about one-third of U.S. homes had at least one HD set, up from 29% the previous November.
But that figure was up even more from February 2008 when distribution was at 19%;
via MediaPost
They now sell 32″ hdtv’s for well less than $400. Also I don’t think traditional CRT tv’s are available anymore in the usa except in very small sizes.
I live in the Uk so it might be different here but… Just because you have a HDTV doesnt mean you can watch stuff in HD, you have to have cableHD! is it the same in the US?
josh, HD broadcast television is available over the air in the US.
josh – to expand on what Bill said, my understanding is that British digital TV was done before HD was under consideration.
In the US, the Reagan administration mandated the TV companies go hi-def, and they came up with something called ATSC which is a generic digital TV standard that supports HD (though a channel doesn’t have be HD) and multiplexing, so one station can broadcast multiple channels.
In the last two or three years, the major networks have started converting everything to HD. At the same time, the old analog channels have been scheduled to be turned off. Ironically, cable TV is one of the few outlets that will be left next month supporting analog TVs. Almost everyone else either has to buy an STB or just upgrade their TVs, and virtually all TVs sold now are HDTVs.
It’s all rather nice. Free HDTV, not just movies (which, admittedly, tend to be cut to death by the networks) but regular TV shows like House, 24, Dollhouse, Chuck, essentially the majority of prime time TV shows. Most of the dramas are filmed in 24p, with pulldown used to encode the video as 1080i. Encoding is MPEG2 at around 10-15Mbps (max 20, but most stations broadcast an additional SD channel), which has occasional visible artifacts, but not many (interference tends to be more of a problem.)
You can imagine the combination of the disappearance in analog content, and the volume of HD content in digital form, means that people are much more interested in HDTVs than they would otherwise be.
Can an HD television set work with an analouge signal/ over the air??
Shem – most of them, yes, although after June the newer US models will probably drop the feature.