A new study is out regarding HDTV penetration and it's encouraging - but there is still a long ways to go before the mandated February 17, 2009 transition from analog to digital broadcasting.
About 28 percent of U.S. households now have an HD television set, according to new findings by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The CEA set the number of HDTVs in the United States at 35 million. More than half of those sets were in the big-screen category, 40 inches or larger. Furthermore, the study showed the vast majority (86 percent) of owners were "highly satisfied" with their purchase.
The results were released earlier this week by CEA, which surveyed 2,090 adults in December. In addition to the announced statistics, CEA provided some previously unreleased findings from the study.
*Consumers paid an average of $1,347 for an HD set.
*Most owners keep their HDTV in the living room (76 percent), while 8 percent have one in the master bedroom. Storage of the set is fairly evenly split between TV stands (37 percent) and entertainment centers (33 percent), indicating a lack of interest in cumbersome wall-mounting.
*Most said they received content with a cable set-top-box (40 percent), followed by satellite (34 percent), cable without a set-top box (18 percent), antenna (10 percent), Internet (4 percent) and fiber optic line (4 percent).
*Watching TV (92 percent) and DVDs/VCR tapes (80 percent) were the primary uses of the HDTV, followed by playing video games (37 percent), listening to music (35 percent), viewing digital photos (12 percent) and accessing the Internet (6 percent).
Courtesy: Consumer Electronics Association (www.ce.org)
