I hear a lot of people saying that HD is irrelevant to this generation because "hardly anyone has an HDTV" (the usual estimate is about 25% of people). I don't imagine anyone remembers, but I've argued a few times on here that this estimate is wrong because: A) the polls that estimate was based on (the actual figure was 28%) were taken at the beginning of the year, and HDTV penetration rates are much higher now, and B) that figure was for the general population, whereas video gamers are a technologically affluent subgroup in which HDTV owners will naturally be much more common. My guess was that something like 70% of PS3 owners were using HDTVs, and more than half of Wii owners (I never got around to the 360).

 Finally, Nielson's done the research to find the actual figures. They are:

 Percentage of consoles hooked up to an HDTV

Wii: 65%

XBox 360: 66%

PS3: 71%

The audio hookup data is interesting too: 

Only a small fraction of people are using SDTVs or standard TV speakers. 

 There are a lot of implications of this, which could have (and have had) threads of their own. At the very least though, I hope this ends the myth that HDTV and HD support don't matter. HD is already the norm; in five years, it'll be almost ubiquitous.

This is only for console gamers, unfortuantely, and console gamers are still a very small part of the market, and also a part of the market ususally more in the know about AV technology, this is not representative of the market as a whole, nor of even most owneners of HDTVs, most of whom do not have any HD service.

HD still has a long ways to go before it is important to most people 

I am still rocking on a 20-inch '86 JVC television. My bro has got his Xbox, N64, and PC hooked up to a Dolby 5.1 Surround sound stereo.

Snesboy

Extrapolating from these figures (very roughly).
If there are 100 M television households.
Just over 1 in 5 have a console.
And if one-quarter are high def hosueholds -- that's 25M.

And if two-thirds of consoles are hooked up to HD-TV and 20M have been sold -- that's 13 M

Therefore, half the HD TVs in the US have games hooked up to them.

Does this make sense?

(The more I see of Nielson's numbers about gaming -- the less I trust them).

Mike from Morgantown

Nielson, Patcher, NPD Funworld.....

They are all full of shit.

Snesboy

I own a Wii, and I have a 42" HDTV, with a home theatre surround sound 6.1 set-up...

And you should really add a 6 speaker set up to that list. Some people would say that 7.1 is inferior to 6.1, because with 7.1 the two back speakers are mono.

I onw a Wii PS3 and 360 as well as a stand alone HDDVD player and a single speaker surround bar from Yamaha^^b simulates 5.1 sound pretty damn well. 32" HDTV but the rest of my household uses 30" or lower SDTV's and show no signs of changing till current tv's are dead...

With 6.1 source material 7.1 back speakers are mono, but with DPLIIx or 7.1 source material they aren't.

I have a 42" HDTV and a Wii too

(plus a PS3 that only gets used for PS1/PS2 games[woot for FFIX], and a 7.1 audio setup) 

Now that is quite interesting, because a common argument for Nintendo-haters is that "when people buy more HDTVs they won't give a damn about Wii", but this proves that a good deal of Wii owners ALREADY have HDTVs, so that's another argument that can be ignored from now on.

On the sound department, it's much more hassle than the TV. People usually sticks to TV speakers because of the laziness... like me. I have my Wii on the TV's pseudo-stereo sound. I have a spare 2.1 speakers lying somewhere in my house, but... you know.