My Cart - It seems that the introduction of HDTV has been instrumental in keeping viewers watching for longer. Studies conducted in America have shown that those households that have HDTV, about 50%, spend around 3% more time watching prime-time programming than non HD households.
Cheap Plasma TVs
In the US HDTV has been extremely popular with consumers, and it is widely thought to be the most quickly adopted piece of technology since VCR was introduced to consumers in the early 80’s. In Britain HDTV is experiencing similar success and its little wander with cheap plasma TVs and cheap LCD TVs being available from many different retailers.
However, the adoption of this technology on the part of the consumer is simple. All they need to do is buy themselves a cheap plasma TV with HD capabilities. However, for broadcasters there many changes that need to be made behind the scenes to accommodate for the new technology. New cameras and equipment need to be purchased to allow for HD broadcasts and many changes need to be made to existing practices too. For example, the way make up has been applied to news readers in the US had to be adapted for HD as everything shows up very clearly in a high definition broadcast.
So, whilst the upgrade to HD for us consumers might be as simple as buying a new cheap plasma TV there’s a great deal of work that we probably haven’t even thought about that goes into enabling this technology. So, spare a thought for the program makers and broadcasters next time you tune into your favourite show in high definition.
