Digital TV Take Up Is "Poor"

It seems that the great white hype of Digital TV is not living up to its predicted success. Forrester Research has just released a report that doesn't paint too good a picture for all those "digidons" who have jumped on the DTV bandwagon.

"Unless current market conditions change dramatically, digital television is going to fail," said Ekaterina Walsh, an analyst at Forrester Research and author of the study. Among 10,000 consumers surveyed, Forrester found that almost a third of Americans haven't even heard of digital television [a third of Americans also don't own passports either], despite the fact that the technology has been on the market for almost a year now.

"It's looking like the entire consumer electronics industry is living on the 'build it and they'll come' theory. And that's not going to work," Walsh said. "If consumers don't know what it is, they won't buy it."

There has been much talk about the "Future of Television" in the media, about how it will be allow for a raft of new applications and service as well as providing enhanced image and sound quality. But, as with many new formats, there is sometimes too much talk and not enough product. The difference between the American and UK markets is also a considering factor, as the report bases the fact that Digital TV is High Definition TV, rather than the set-top box plugged into your existing analogue TV which is it in the UK. This is important as HDTV is ridiculously expensive as not many broadcasters support it and it is still a proprietary format.

"The problem is that digital TV isn't really fulfilling an obvious need that consumers have. It's a 'push' rather than 'pull' product," said Walsh. Forrester predicts that consumers won't bite until high-definition digital television systems can be had for about US$2,000, or about 60 percent less than the cheapest models currently available.

Either way, as the WebTV article below also points out, it is not going to smooth road to get those binary bits into the front rooms of the world's homes.

http://www.forrester.com/

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