| DTV Sales Up 99% In September 2003 Over Previous Year |
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| Home Theater News Industry-Trade News | |
| Written by Scott Selter | |
| Tuesday, 28 October 2003 | |
 DTV
sales continue to boom despite a prolonged U.S. recession and worldwide
economic problems. Marking the highest one-month total for digital
television (DTV) product sales, the Consumer Electronics Association
(CEA) today issued factory-to-dealer sales figures for September
totaling 530,656 units and $791,487,344."These figures not only top the sales charts - they're off the charts," said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. "We've clearly reached the mass market point for DTV, particularly high-definition television (HDTV) products, which account for 87 percent of the sales total. "If you look at CEA's sales figures since product introduction in the fourth quarter of 1998, you see that we've had steadily stronger sales months throughout the DTV transition. But September 2003 marks a new realm in terms of DTV adoption and momentum. The consumer survey we released last month at our Industry Forum revealed that nine million households would be purchasing HDTV over the next 18 months. That fact already is playing out in the marketplace. The new digital cable ready (DCR) HDTVs that will begin appearing on store shelves in the near future will compound this sales growth." The year-to-date unit sales total now has reached 2.5 million units, which brings the cumulative unit total for sales since product introduction in the fourth quarter of 1998 to 7.3 million. Dollar sales for 2003 are $4 billion, which elevates the total consumer investment in DTV products to $12.7 billion. CEA Market Research projects that 4.3 million DTV units will be sold in 2003, 5.8 million in 2004, 8.3 million in 2005, 11.9 million in 2006 and 16.2 million in 2007. DTV products are defined as integrated sets and monitors displaying active vertical scanning lines of at least 480p and, in the case of integrated sets, receiving and decoding ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions. Other factors during DTV’s growth include increasing amounts of content available via digital cable and or satellite including Cablevision’s new HDTV oriented Voom system. Another pop DTV sales will enjoy will come from the release of HDTV PVRs (personal video recorders like TiVo) so that people can record their favorite shows in 720p or 1080i HDTV instead of the lower resolution 480i found on standard NTSC TV. One detail that isn’t known is how many DTVs being sold are setup to actually watch HDTV. One would assume a fraction of the hundreds of thousands since many areas of the U.S. still have no or very little access to HDTV. While this keeps HDTV audiences lower than the TV networks would like to see, there is hope in that satellite and cable providers now sell the hardware and service necessary to retrofit a DTV for HDTV service. With its model in place, DVT sales will boom and HDTV subscribers will continue to grow at the same time. Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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