Equipment manufacturers, service providers and content producers are all blaming each other for the slowdown in digital take-up although the Yankee Group forecasts that digital television monitors will be in 24 million US homes by the end of 2006.
“Broadcasters alone cannot drive the transition,” said Adi Kishore, co-author of the report. “Carriage by multichannel providers will be the key, along with an expanded slate of high-definition programming from the networks,” Kishore said. Co-author Ryan Jones added, “Without increased support from providers and content owners, the challenge of educating consumers about the value of HDTV falls disproportionately on consumer electronics retailers.”
The report determined that broadcasters must evaluate their proposed digital services and set deployment within the context of the services and timelines being considered by other broadcast stations in the market. Multicasting and datacasting are also considered to add value to a station’s brand even if the applications do not generate significant revenue, it concluded.
