Is Europe Finally Going HD?

You may assume that because we have a relatively high amount of HDTV content here in the US that the same is true for all other Western countries. This is not only far from true, it's... well, yeah it's pretty much just far from true. Residents of the UK, for example, have not had much access to HDTV programming for various reasons - most of them infrastructure based... and even some ultimately political in nature.

While it's never widely discussed, it is not unusual for the same products to be sold at the same numerical value in both the UK and the United States. What's odd about that? Well, let's say an HDTV which may be sold for $1500 here in the states might cost $1500 pounds in the UK ($3000). Ouch. Look out for a follow-up article on this topic.

Even so, a recent report from Reed Electronics Research states that European sales of HDTV will rocket up by 158 percent in 2007, reaching 38.1 million units. These statistics were gathered by market researcher Strategy Analytics.

Carrying the trends even further, they postulated that by 2012 nearly three quarters of all European homes (some 70%) will own at least one HD-ready display - an almost ten-fold increase from the estimated 2006 numbers! This also corresponds to the date set for mandatory elimination of UK/European analogue broadcast signals in lieu of digital ones. These numbers are so staggering as to be... well, unbelievable. We'll have to let time sort it out to see what really happens in the marketplace.

David Mercer, principal analyst at Strategy Analytics, predicted that “Europe’s high definition TV transition is well under way.” In the report, titled "High Definition TV and Video Device Sales Forecast: Europe," the high definition transition in Europe will finally pick up after initially falling behind the US and Japan. While demand was initially driven by HDTVs, but additional HD source devices (such as Xbox 360, PlayStation3, HD DVD and BD players) is now providing European consumers with more access to HD content.