Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 3, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
94 percent of European consumers want HDTV – once they have become acquainted with it. That is the key finding of a study by the Dutch electronics group Philips, whose results the company is now making public. According to it, consumers would only be convinced by what they had seen for themselves, following the principle “Seeing is Believing.”
In detailed surveys commissioned by Philips in Germany and Great Britain, consumers had expressed themselves as “positively enthusiastic” about the outstanding picture quality and had displayed an enthusiasm that had not been observed to date in the introduction of any new technology in the field of consumer electronics, the company explains. 94 percent of respondents would rate HDTV as “excellent” or “very good” compared with conventional television, with regard to the TV experience as a whole and picture quality in particular. Traditional analog television, by contrast, achieved a satisfaction score of only 26 percent. According to Philips, 93 percent of consumers confirmed the clear superiority of the digital pictures in terms of brilliance, sharpness and detail.
Asked which programs they believed benefited most from the HDTV format, 74 percent of survey participants stated that the better picture quality was “extremely important” for feature films. For documentaries, 49 percent of respondents shared this view, while 43 percent of consumers also hoped for benefits from the digital technology for sports programs.
The quantitative study was conducted on behalf of Philips in October 2006 by the market research company MRI Heidelberg in Germany and Great Britain.
