One year ago, I made a prediction:
"2004 will be the year of DTV."
I also said that "twelve months from now I'll either be a genius or an idiot."
So how'd I do? It's time to see whether I'm a genius or an idiot (at least in regard to my prediction, the rest of you just keep your comments to yourselves).
So, was 2004 the year of DTV? Kind of (which makes me kind of a genius but also kind of an idiot).
In 2004, sports drove HD, which drove DTV. If an event wasn't in HD, you noticed. The FCC launched its DTV website (www.dtv.gov) to encourage, rightly or wrongly, the American people to go out and buy a DTV set. But the big deciding factor will be holiday DTV set sales.
I write this on the Monday after Thanksgiving, with 26 shopping days until Christmas, with retailers predicting (according to UPI) "booming digital television sales this Christmas season, alleviating the worries of industry officials and federal regulators."
The CEA is predicting that about seven million digital television sets will be sold this year, whatever the CEA says a digital television set is.
I'm starting to look more like a genius...until you remember that almost 22 million analog TVs are expected to be sold this year. That will be an analog to digital ratio of about 3:1. I suppose that it really won't be the year of DTV until digital set sales exceed analog set sales.
Then again, Voom is still alive, there's more HD programming, reality show are being shot in HD, and we'll see more DTV set offerings with lower prices as the FCC's All Channel Receiver Act affects more and more TVs.
This year may not have been the year of DTV and I might be an idiot, but it was a better year for DTV than any other, and I predict that 2005 will only get better.
