Over Fifty Percent of Western Europe is living without HDTV, less than Ten Percent have Blu-ray

Though HD is the new standard and you will be hard pressed to find a new television that isn’t HD Ready, less than 50% of Western European households have made the switch into high definition, according to a new study by Futuresource Consulting (see graph below). When it comes to Blu-ray, far fewer have made the change, less than 10% to be exact, and this is including PS3 sales in the mix. The UK leads the bunch with the highest percentage of HDTV and Blu-ray ownership, while France, Spain, Germany and Italy trail behind; or far behind in the case of Germany and Italy.

The thought of 76% percent of Germany, and 58% of the UK, living without an HDTV in this day and age is unexpected, but even stranger still is the idea that so many who purchased an HDTV, declined to acquire a Blu-ray player to feed their new toy full-HD content. Of course, the limited Blu-ray ownership does not really come as a surprise, as much has already been made of the format’s failure to really catch on. Upscaling DVD players, the high cost and poor reliability of new Blu-ray devices, a lack of titles available for the format, and of course an unstable economic climate, have all played their part in ensuring that Blu-ray controls only a measly four percent of the video market. Indeed, with such low ownership rates as pointed out by the Futuresource Consulting study, the technology is incapable of controlling a larger market share.

With that said, the outlook is not entirely negative for the disc format. For starters, the discrepancy between the amount of HDTVs sold in Western Europe, 69 million, and the number of Blu-ray players sold, 8 million, leaves a gigantic void of HD Ready TVs without their accompanying Blu-ray players. Considering the limited number of channels and programmes broadcast in HD, going Blu-ray is often the only, and/or best, way to enjoy full-HD content. With prices finally starting to resemble reality, take the reasonably priced and recently released Samsung BD-P1500 player for example, more downloadable content from BD-Live, and more titles, the format is definitely set to grow at a faster rate than before. But whilst Blu-ray might outlive the five year lifespan the Samsung UK director gave it, the Futuresource Consulting study does confirm the disc format is still a long way off from ever replacing the ubiquitous DVD.

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