[Satellite TODAY Insider 08-25-11] Approximately 94 percent of U.K. households will have a TV set capable of receiving high-definition (HD) programming by 2016, which places the country well above the projected average international 2016 HD penetration rate of 48 percent and slightly behind leaders Canada and New Zealand at 95 percent, according to an Informa Telecoms and Media report issued Aug. 24.

            The results do not exclude HD set-equipped homes that are not receiving HD service. Informa Media Research Manager Adam Thomas projected that by 2016, an average 70 percent of the world’s homes will actually be using their HD sets to watch HD-quality programs.

“In this category, the United Kingdom is ahead of the game with 72 percent of HD-ready homes expected to watch HD programming by 2016, but well behind the global leader, which is the United States at 91 percent. The United Kingdom lag is caused by the popularity of Freeview, which is forecast to have only around half of its users watching HD programming by 2016,” Thomas wrote in the report.

   The overall HD set penetration results are impressive, considering HD-ready sets were present in just 3 percent of the world’s TV households as recently as 2005, when they were considered a “novel technology,” according to Thomas. The HD set market is enjoying a period of rapidly growing sales, with a net 60 million households to be added by the end of 2011.

   “This means that 23 percent of the world’s primary TV sets will be HD-ready by year-end,” said Thomas. “These numbers indicate that, by the end of the forecast period, TV services in several countries will be approaching the point where most, if not all, of their users are watching HD content. This raises the interesting prospect of a second wave of switchovers after 2016, with standard definition being switched off and HD effectively becoming the new standard definition.”

   Thomas noted that the extra capacity freed up by a second wave of switchovers could raise the possibility of an emerging next-generation HD format, which “would offer an enhancement to what will, by then, have become standard HD,” said Thomas.