Audio Video News

First the good news: More than 39 million U.S. households have HDTVs. Now the bad news: Only 22 million of them have a source of high-def programming, leaving the other 17 million out in the standard-def cold.

That's the news from In-Stat, as reported in This Week in Consumer Electronics. On the bright side, the number of households with HD program access increased by 40 percent in 2008.

And the U.S. is way ahead of the rest of the world in HD penetration. Even in affluent Europe, the number of HD households won't reach 10 million (a quarter of the current U.S. total) until 2011. Of course, they do have all those concert halls and cafes and walkable streets and trams and fountains and stuff.

The biggest U.S. HD providers are cable and satellite, which together serve nearly 80 percent of HD households. (DTV transition crisis? What DTV transition crisis?) Telco and over-the-air TV supply the remainder.