TV experts speaking at the opening of the IBC broadcast technology conference in Amsterdam last week say that the biggest obstacle to wide scale adoption of high-definition TV is a lack of education amongst the viewing public. However, they also stated that this education needed to extend to broadcast operators.
Thomas Wrede, VP of Product Management, Media, at SES ASTRA, predicted that even by 2015 only 40% of European households would be capable of receiving a high-definition signal, the rest being stuck with standard definition.
There's also currently a premium cost for content producers. Studies in the US, where HD content is more prevalent, suggest that production costs increase by 10-15% for HD compared to SD.
Europe's cable and satellite operators currently rely on a lot of this US-produced content. Brian Sullivan of BSkyB admits that there isn't a lot of non-sport European HD content at present.
"If you create the HD programming and put it out there, the consumers will buy sets," said Brad Hunt, Chief Technology Officer of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). "And it's happening in the United States They're doing it because the broadcasters have gotten on board and they're really delivering some compelling high-quality HD content."
Hopefully as the price of HD equipment continues to decrease, more broadcasters will be able to produce HD content and we'll see an increase in quality, home-grown HD content for our new TVs. Either that or we'll be watching a lot of films.
(Via EETimes)
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