According to a press release from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today, most than 50% of US homes now own a digital television (DTV). Note that DTV doesn’t necessarily mean HDTV. There are standard definition digital televisions.

“I am proud to announce our nation has hit this digital milestone. With 50 percent of U.S. homes able to experience the reality of digital television, we have crossed a critical threshold,” said Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of CEA. “2008 will continue to demonstrate the growth and success of DTV, with nearly 32 million units forecasted to ship. Consumers are particularly keen to add HDTV to their homes, with high definition expected to account for 79 percent of total DTV shipments in the U.S. in 2008.”

Since, except for some lingering stock, all televisions sold in the US must have digital tuners at this point, meaning nearly 100% of TVs sold are DTVs, that implies 79% of TVs sold in 2008 would be HDTVs. Which is pretty impressive, and shows the rapid turn in the market toward HDTV. I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more on DTV and HDTV at CES just over a week from now.

The full press release is below:
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Bruce Perens over at Technocrat pointed out something I hadn’t even thought of, and that I don’t recall being discussed elsewhere - the pending possible failure of TV Guide On Screen (TVGOS) dependent devices. According to Gemstar, more than 25 million households have TVGOS devices. Many, probably most, of these devices obtain their data from a signal embedded in the local analog PBS station’s broadcast. While an updated version of TVGOS which can use data from digital stations was released in 2006, most of the installed devices are analog-only.

The Gemstar TVGOS guide system was, and is, used in many TVs, VCRs, DVD recorders, and even DVRs. The Sony CableCARD DVRs, the DHG-HDD250 and DHG-HDD500, rely on TVGOS for not only their guide data, but also to set their clocks.

What will happen to all of these devices when the analog broadcasts cease on (or before) February 11, 2009? Even if you don’t use antenna, if the local PBS station goes all digital, the feed to your cable provider would be from the digital source. Even if the cable provider continued to provide the channel in analog form, it would be unlikely to contain the TVGOS data as the source feed would not. It seems likely that these devices will simply cease to function, or at least suffer a major loss of features, when the guide data is no longer available. It is already known that the Sony DVRs wouldn’t work in some areas of the country where the TVGOS data was simply unavailable as it was not carried by any of the stations.