HDTV penetration among console gamers

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Borkachev said:

I haven't yet seen a single HDTV with HD tuner, they all have SD tuners built-in.

Uh, what? There isn't really such a thing as an "HD tuner." There are digital (ATSC) tuners, which receive digital broadcasts, which may or may not be HD. Virtually every HDTV ever made has one of these -- the ones that don't have to be called "HD Ready" or "HD monitors" rather than HDTVs. Most of them also have analog (NTSC) tuners, but that doesn't keep them from receiving HD signals.

And earlier this year, august perhaps, there was a worldwide poll in Everybody Votes Channel, about is your TV widescreen, and only about half of the voters had widescreen, meaning half was still playing with 4:3 TV:s. And assuming that the people who have their Wiis online are more tech orientated people, the result was surprising. So, i'm a little sceptic about the research in the OP. It could be possible, but i still see the number a little high.

Well, I would hope that work done by the Nielson Group is a little more scientific than the Everybody Votes Channel. For instance, one factor that could confound that poll is the possibility that people who are still amused by entertainment polls are a less tech-savvy group as a whole (and I say that without any snideness).

Well, i've seen only ones with DVB-tuners. There's even own standards for OTA, cable, satellite and mobile phones TV broadcasts and you need a decoder for each. And a digital HD-receiver costs about the same than HDTV:s at cheapest. To be called "HD-Ready", the TV needs to have either DVI or HDMI input and 720+ resolution. I have seen these TV:s, that are advertised as HDTV:s, but it looks like they differ from HD-Ready so, that they have 1080p resolution and HDMI input. Theoretically SD tuners could read HD broadcasts, since SD channels come in packages, and one package uses the bandwidth of one channel in HD (720p). But we'll see about that, i believe there's even own standard for DVB-HD. They actually are planning to broadcast one HD channel and the same SD channel in one package. One problem is, that there's only Estonia, which is really pushing HD-broadcasts. Instead of going digital, they go to HD. The whole digital SD/digital HD thing is so heavily lobbed by electronics manufacturers and electronics retail, so we won't be getting the easiest way. Oh, and one notion is, that the future PS3 SKU includes both, HD and SD tuners. You may be right about the people who vote in the polls, but there is another way how you can think the "tech orientated" people, which didn't come into my mind. Which is, that these people won't necessarily jump to HD, when they know that they benefit only so little from it.