BusinessWeek Online has an interesting piece today about the challenges facing HDTV adoption in Europe. The recently concluded World Cup in Germany was supposed to have been the catalyst for HD sales and programming, but like the ’04 Athens Olympics before it, the big bounce never materialized. These numbers from German researcher GfK are simply astounding:
HD-Ready TV Sets in Use
U.S. – 19 million
Japan – 11 million
Europe – 2 million
Wow. So what’s the problem? There are several, but the lack of content is the biggest and in that area Europe faces a vexing issue that the U.S. and Japan largely do not – the large number of European languages prevent the mass distribution of programming. Read the BW article for more insight.
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Aside from the fact that Europe's idea of "standard definition" has 20% more lines than the US and Japan's. Oh, and the majority of new programming has been broadcast in 16:9 anamorphic for years now.
The good thing is that our favourite US imports are finally decent picture quality, now that we're getting HD feeds downconverted to 16:9 576i.
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