HDTV: Ready or Not

The BBC is reporting that thousands of LCD, plasma and rear projection TVs are being sold in the UK as ‘HD’ when they are incapable of displaying high definition TV.

The article, rightly points out that in order to qualify as ‘HD ready’ a television must have a maximum resolution of at least 720 lines, preferably 1080, and be able to receive video through an HDMI or DVI connection.It says that the reason for the mis-selling is that high street salespeople don’t understand what HDTV really is and this is causing confusion among consumers.

According to on source quoted in the story, only 1.3% of flat screen TVs sold in the UK is compatible with HDTV. In a bid to educate consumers, from April 2005, all HD compatible TVs will carry an ‘HD ready’ sticker as a sign that they will be able to receive HDTV content when it becomes available in Europe.

The story also provides a useful digest of the current state of play in Europe. The BBC has committed to switching all its programmes to HD by 2010 and Sky will ship its first HDTv receiver in time for Xmas this year. Additionally, European channel Premier digital will start HDTV broadcasts in November 2005 and another European station, Canal+ will start its HDTV programming in 2006. Currently, there is only one HDTV channel in Europe avaiable to consumers, the showcase channel HD1.

Falling LCD prices are expected to lead to a significant jump in sales. Prices are falling on average by 20% a year, but fell by 43% in 2004 according to the story.You can read the full story on the BBC news site

The Digital Video Broadcast standards body approved the MPEG-4 based H.264 codec for use in HDTV transmission in Europe. This differs from the US where HDTV signals are encoded using MPEG-2.