• Reuters via Yahoo, Monday, February 12, 2007 11:30 AM

High-definition TVs will be in 151 million homes worldwide by 2011, says a new report from Informa Telecoms and Media, with more than half in the United States. The research group estimates that global high-def penetration was at 48 million homes at the end of 2006, out of 1.2 billion households worldwide that have a TV.

Informa says 58 percent of current high-def homes are in the United States with another 20 percent in Japan. But falling prices should lure millions more to buy the product over the next few years. "The falling price of high-definition sets has really caught the public's imagination, and consumer uptake is impressive," says Informa's Adam Thomas.

But he adds that some customers can be disappointed with the product as there is not always enough content to watch. This is expected to change, the report notes, as some governments set deadlines for broadcasters to deliver a quota of programming in HD.

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