Informa Telecoms and Media predicts that the number of households with HDTV worldwide will jump from 48 million to 151 million by 2011. More importantly, however, the report’s author said that while uptake is strong, some customers are still disappointed with the HD content available on TV today.
I agree more HD video would be nice, but the truth is, at least in the
US, there are a lot of good HD shows on now. EngadgetHD keep a running list of daily HD programming. Tonight for example, all four major networks have prime-time shows in HD. Add in ESPN and I’m pretty much covered.
NBC has also announced that Nightly News will be broadcast in HD starting in March. I’ve never been a regular watcher of TV news, but I can see the difference HD would make. Talking heads aside, TV news has the advantage over radio and newspaper in the video footage it can produce. And while online news can include video, footage - of the Iraq war, a microscope slide, conditions in
Sudan - is not going to have the same impact on a laptop screen as it is in high-def on your living room television.
Speaking of which, Google issued a warning earlier this week that the Internet cannot support continuous streaming of high-quality television. In other words, that model won’t scale, particularly when HDTV reaches the levels that Informa predicts for 2011.
[...] post. Karen asked the Motorola “encoder geeks” how to tell if the video on your TV screen is a high-definition feed or an upconverted standard-definition [...]