High Definition Television is touted to become big business in the country, with approximately one million households to purchase HD-enabled television sets within the year, according to a survey by Continental Research. At this point, digital TV and cable providers are already coming up with HDTV plans for their subscribers. For instance, Sky TV has announced it will offer HDTV services by May, and will offer this for an initial fee of £299 (for the set-top-box that will convert the signal from cable to digital TV) and a monthly fee of £10 on top of the usually £15 to £49 subscription.
The UK is among the countries with a highest ratio of households with digital TV-enabled sets, at a 70% penetration rate. The country’s broadcast system will switch off servicing the analog signals by 2012. Currently, aside from the fact that analog TVs will no longer work by that time, one come-on of HDTV is the clearer picture, because of a higher image resolution.