Is your HDTV giving you HDTV?

What’s not to love about HDTV? The picture is fabulous, prices are coming down dramatically and there’s hundreds of sets from which to choose.

But many consumers who buy high-definition television sets are getting them home, turning them on and thinking what they’re seeing on the screen is HDTV.

It’s not. Chances are a new digital set, HDTV or not, offers a much-improved picture than an older, tube-based TV. But that doesn’t mean the screen is displaying programming in high-definition.

Nor does buying a set that is advertised as HDTV-ready or HDTV-capable.

One in six U.S. households now have at least one high-definition-capable TV, an increase from about 1 out of every 14 households two years ago, according to a study by the Leichtman Research Group.

“Half the people with an HD set are watching HD,” said Bruce Leichtman, company president. “Another quarter believe they’re watching HD, but they’re not.”

“They don’t have the correct equipment, such as a box from the cable or satellite company,” which brings in an HD signal to the set.

(Another way of getting HD is using an old-fashioned TV antenna in the house or on the roof to pick up the HD signal.)

“The main part of the problem has been that the people selling the sets have had little motivation to explain how it works,” Leichtman said.

“They’re interested in selling things like Monster cables and warranties, but not in explaining HD programming.”

Also compounding consumer confusion is the issue of digital television.

Congress has established a deadline of Feb. 17, 2009 for television broadcasting to switch from analog to digital. Analog TVs will still work after that deadline, but will need converter boxes to change digital broadcasts to analog formats.

A TV advertised as being a digital set (DTV) is just that. HDTV may or may not be a part of it.

In 2008, high-definition sets are expected to account for 79 percent of digital TV shipments in the U.S., the Consumer Electronic Association, an industry trade group, said Dec. 28.

But if you’re not an expert at alphabet soup or technology, DTV and HDTV sound awfully similar, and can make the purchasing process more confusing.

HDTV requires these elements:

• Having a video display capable of displaying high-definition resolution (720p and higher)
• Using a high-definition receiver, either built into the set itself or provided by a cable or satellite provider, for example
• Watching high-definition programming, which not all networks and cable channels yet provide.

In a recent study, the Consumer Electronics Association found that 44 percent of HDTV owners actually receive HD programming, 34 percent are definitely not receiving HD programming, 16 percent are not sure and 6 percent think they receive HD programming, but likely are not.

“Consumer confusion is horrible, just horrible,” said Dale Cripps, publisher and founder of HDTV Magazine (www.hdtvmagazine.com).

In 2004, when the public’s interest in HDTV, plasma and LCD screens started to grow, Cripps advocated for a kind of a TV “czar to lead the industry — not for financial purposes, but so that each time something was said” about HDTV, one person would address the issues, “so that we wouldn’t have the confusion caused by competitive technologies.”

That didn’t happen, although the Consumer Electronics Association probably comes closest to acting as such a czar.

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