Press event about HDTV in Stockholm November 26th 2008!
Benny Norling, VP Business Development, SES SIRIUS AB and Chairman, Swedish HDTV Forum will inform about HDTV and the prognosis for 2009.
Dear HDTV lovers,
Sales of HD-enabled TV sets and projectors ("HD ready or HD ready/1080p") are still showing amazing numbers, despite the economic downturn. The consumer electronics industry has been extremely good at delivering flat panel TVs with excellent design. And people are buying larger TVs - the volume product in Sweden this year is 40 - 42 inch!
The retailers have been good at selling and the expectations for a perfect digital picture starts when connected at home...But few are WATCHING HD programmes. There are several reasons - the retailers did not sell any content, HD programming have initially been scarce and consumers not being aware. Now, HD programming and content is available from many HD sources and within 6 month, 50% of the Swedish TV households will be HD ready! This is valid for most countries in Scandinavia and TV broadcasters and pay-TV operators are seeing the opportunities ahead.
In Europe, BSkyB is leading the race with more than 500.000 subscribers' achieved in just about 2 year's time. It's their best selling value added service ever. And at the end this year - 30 HD channels in the line-up!
Within the Swedish HDTV forum I suggested that something must be done! The initiative was well received and we are now performing a press event in Stockholm, see attached (in Swedish).
Our objective is to make journalist, broadcasters, trade representatives and others aware of the increasing numbers of HD sources available to the TV viewer. The DVD is now 10 years old - now BluRay will increase the excitement in front of our screens. The TV viewer will have a new reference, equal to going from the old VHS tape to DVD at that time. So the Swedish HDTV Forum decided to put up a demonstration event showing the various options for HD viewing from TV broadcasts, game consoles, BluRay, digital still and video cameras at this event.
It's' about putting the right fuel into peoples Ferraris on the wall. Why feed signals with 576 lines resolution when the TV is made for 768 or even 1080 lines? The "WOW Factor" is available at a screen close to you...!
More pixels to the people!
Benny Norling
VP Business Development, SES SIRIUS AB
Chairman, Swedish HDTV Forum
