Study Points to HD “Content Gap”

LONDON, June 25: Despite a
rapid take-up of high-definition television sets across Europe—with a
penetration of 18 percent of the region’s 165 million TV households at the end
of 2007—there is still a dearth of HD content available to watch, according
to a new Screen Digest study.

The report points to a
“content gap,” with less than 1 percent of homes with HD units—about 1
million—actually equipped with a high-definition set-top box and
subscription package. There are about 100 HD channels in Europe currently, Screen
Digest says, with the bulk
available on satellite platforms. Sweden is the only market to have already
launched HD on free-to-air digital terrestrial TV. The report maintains that
only France and the U.K. are likely to follow suit in the short term.

This situation is not
expected to be much better by 2012—only 20 percent of the 85 percent of
European households with HD displays will actually be watching in high
definition. HD will near critical mass by 2015, the report continues.

Vincent Létang, a senior
analyst at Screen Digest and
author of the report, noted: “In the next five years, HDTV will remain little
more than a pay-TV product in Europe—primarily on satellite. Analogue
switch-off, which will happen between 2010 and 2012, will free up bandwidth
capacity on the digital terrestrial platform and will kick-start the next phase
of growth in HD TV. HDTV will become the mainstream and ultimately the standard
form of free television around the middle of the next decade. In ten years
time, nobody will ever refer to ‘high definition‚’ because HD will be
everywhere.”

HD TV 2008: Global
Uptake, Strategies and Business Models
also includes analyses of the strategies of 15 leading pay-TV operators in the
region.

—By Mansha Daswani