A good piece on Mediaguardian about HD, with Sky’s service launching today, and material already being available to some Telewest customers.
I tend to think that it won’t take off quite as quickly as some would hope, since we’ve alredy got more definition with PAL, compared to the US NTSC format. We’ve also had widescreen for quite a while now. We’re certainly all buying HD ready TVs, but that’s really a by product of the cheaper and more readily available flat screen LCD and plasma TVs that are now on the market. They’re HD ready by default.
Undoubtedly, some will be jumping to upgrade their Sky or Telewest systems, but for most it’ll be a natural progression rather than a quick jump. Allied to the fact that we still don’t know which format will win out in the Hi Def DVD market, complications over various DRM systems, and suddenly it’s only the early adopters who’ll be jumping in – at least until Sky end up giving away the boxes to all their customers.
HD won’t move as fast in Britain as some expect. Certainly not as fast as it has in the States.