I'm in Australia, and HDTV seems to be taking off really slowly. Not many people seem to know much about it.

Is it big in the USA?

I have it and love it.

However, I recently heard a figure of only 350,000 HDTV sets sold in the US.

Doesn't seem like much to me, but I am not sure if it's accurate.

There's a chicken and egg thing with number of HDTV sets and programming. Plus there are different formats for number of lines and things. Most of the sets sold can handle multiple formats, but are expensive, which is why there any many, which is why there isn't any programming . . . Do until . . .

They are taking off pretty slowly too. I am guessing most of the owners mostly watch DVDs, not TV.

I have it and love it too. There is quite a bit of prime time HD shows on the local channels. Showtime and HBO have HD channels. The number of offerings are slowly increasing.

The answer is no, it is not popluar. Give it another 4 to 5 years. Cost to much to buy a new HDTV.

Out of all my friends(and I have alot of friends), none have HDTV.

People look at the price of a great 36 inch TV and the cost of a HDTV, they will spend the $700(Tax included) on the 36 inch everytime. A DVD looks great on the new 36 inch TV and you save about $1,300.00.

I have to agree here. The broadcast programming that IS available in HDTV format is nothing special - I mean the extra picture you get on an HDTV does nothing to enhance the image of the non-HDTV reception. I was at a Best Buy the other day and they were showing some CBS programming on both regular and HDTV side by side. Some dude was like "Why should I pay all that extra money to see more of the Yes, Dear set when nothing is happening there?" I had to agree - it might as well have been black bars running down the side for all the valuable image information being shown. With HBO, The Sopranos is shown widescreen anyway so you miss nothing with a regular TV.

Plus, I think people are put off by the confusing sales pitches. The sales folks never seem to know what they're talking about and people are like "So I have to pay twice as much for this TV and then there's no tuner in it?"

No - it hasn't taken off here. Congress had passed a law mandating that all broadcast TV would have to be in HDTV format by a certain time for total cut over, but even that date has been radically scaled back to the best of my knowledge.

Just to pick a nit, they are required to switch to digital, not to HDTV. The difference is a matter of resolution. With one digital channel of ~ 19Mbps, the station can show multiple standard definitons channels (~4), or one HDTV, plus datacasting, etc.

In fact, during the NCAA tourny, my local stations WRAL and WRAZ teamed up to show one game in HDTV and four regional games from other parts of the country in standard definition, all at the same time. Typically, these multiple channels are used for things like weather radar displays and 24 hour local news.

There is a timeline of the cutover to digital here. The endpoint is supposed to be 2006, when stations are required to give up their analog channel, and just use their digital channel. Right now, the stations have been granted a "free" extra channel so they can have a digital and analog channel at the same time during the cutover.

AVS Forum's FAQ on HDTV is here.