In the United States HDTV is gaining more and more ground. In Europe however HD is struggling to become widely accepted. Most likely HDTV will develop as a pay TV product in Europe, and most likely as a satellite product.

Research company Screen Digest found that three factors are important for HDTV to become popular: amount of people owning HD-ready displays, availablity of HD content on both TV and other content carriers, as well the availability of HD broadcasts on TV platforms such as cable, free to air and satellite.

Still, there is hope for Europeans, as in the United States, analogue TV will be switched off (2010-2012) and all TV will become digital. This digital TV will likely be HD as it will incorporate the latest technology available. This should be the beginning of HDTV migration where most Europeans will probably not even talk about HD anymore, as this has become the standard for TV. 

For the current moment however there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. There is a lack of HD broadcasting, certainly on free to air platforms (with only Sweden, UK and France having some HD line-up), there is lack of local HD channels and last but not least a lack of ambition from a number of European pay TV operators.