February 17, 2005

HDTV And The Coming Bandwidth Crunch

Consumers' Appetite For Big TVs Drives Demand For Fat Content

by Josh Bernoff

with Chris Charron, Tenley McHarg, Sally M. Cohen

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Consumers lust for the new big, flat TV sets — 39% of consumers say their next TV will be a flat-panel plasma or LCD TV set. Even consumers with below average incomes are buying big TV sets. As HDTV penetration grows past 50 million homes in the next five years, increasing numbers of networks will switch to HDTV, while cable and satellite providers will find half of their digital subscribers signing up for HDTV service. Result: a major bandwidth crunch in cable and satellite. Producers, networks, and advertisers should move to HD quickly for their programs. Telcos should make the breadth of HDTV choices a selling point as they roll out TV over IP.

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