Speaking at the Edinburgh International TV Festival, Jill Offman, senior vice president and channel director of Discovery UK, revealed that most of the new shows being filmed for the channel were being made in high definition TV (HDTV), in order to keep up with the technological advances in the television market place.
In an increasingly competitive multi channel world, Offman asserted that in order to keep up with rival broadcasters, programme makers must look towards HDTV, saying: “Anyone who has any kind of forward thinking will want HD.”
The cost of producing programmes in HD has previously put the television industry off the format, but Offman claimed that HD “doesn’t have to be more expensive if you work hard.”
According to market research firm In-Stat, HDTV will hit 15.5 million households worldwide by the end of 2005, with penetration forecast to reach 52 million by 2009 (see Global HDTV Penetration To Reach 52 Million By 2009).
The company’s report, Got HD? show that there are currently 10 million homes globally watching HDTV programming on a high definition television set, 4 million of those in the US.
At the end of 2004, Sony predicted that penetration of HDTV would be four times greater in Europe than previous industry forecasts. Chris Deering, European president of Sony said that, by 2009, 20 million European households would have HDTV (see Sony Sees Vast Expansion For HDTV).
Previous predictions for HDTV penetration in the US, from Strategy Analytics, estimated that there would be 37 million HD enabled sets in US homes by the end of 2008. (see HDTV To Reach 37 Million US Homes By 2008).
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