Sky Sports HD, anyone?
The Western economies may be slowing, but the past summer’s sporting events, including Euro 2008 and the Beijing Olympics, have boosted HDTV’s profile in Europe. Both events generated a “surge in the penetration of of High Definition technologies throughout Europe.” So says DEG Europe, which is a sort of HD lobby there that tries to convince consumers that HDTV is really, really cool (and worth the money).
It’s estimated that by the end of the summer, or now-ish, about one-third of all Euro households will have HDTV. Not that I’m living at now :-(
Another caveat: consumers are still buying plain old DVDs, but DEG Europe sees that business soon topping off.
IFA tells a similar tale. Despite the terrible economy—Germany’s retracted last quarter—companies like Panasonic and Sony and Samsung were still hawking the biggest and brightest TVs money can buy. Strange industry, this.