28 percent of Americans Own HDTV

So says the Consumer Electronics Associations, the folks that put on the big CES show every year. Well it seems that after 10 years of struggling to get off the ground, high-def has hit critical mass. I personally am dismayed whenever I have to watch standard-def TV on a high-def set because it looks so much worse than on a standard-def set. It's a big pixelated, stretch-out mess that will exagerate any flaws in the image, including compression artifacts from your digital cable or satellite. And let's be clear that there is not that much high-def content out there on TV. But apparently this doesn't bother consumers that much because 86% said that they were highly satisified with their TV according to this survey. When you do get a good signal, like decent HD or even an upconverted DVD, then a decent high-def display can really shine.

TV folks not only have to worry about whether to deliver HD content but also widescreen content too. I'm assuming that standard-def channels will have a place in the future because of the trade-off between quality and bandwith will make it reasonable to have more channels at a lower resolution. So when will standard-def go widescreen? I know in Europe, where there's not much HDTV, their TV is already widescreen. When the analog shutoff of over-the-air TV comes in 2 years how many of those 4x3 tube TV's will become our toxic legacy to the futre and end up in the landfills to be replaced by LCD flat-panels? Well considering that 10 years ago I thought DVD's would never take off because everyone would be glued to their brand-new high-def sets that the public was about to rush out and buy, I'm not going to hazard a guess.

[via Engadget]