HDTV – Fail? Not Quite: The Forrester Research 1998 HDTV Fairy Tale

Engadget HD has an interesting snippet about a research tech report published in 1998 that stated HDTV had “no future”, and that even basic HDTVs would still be $2,000 in 2008. Needless to say, that report was way off, and we’re quite happy about that fact.

More from the posting:

One of our favorite pastimes is to give analysts and researchers a hard time and this is one that we just couldn’t pass up. The HDTV Almanac happened across a very old Forrester Research report that didn’t think HDTV had much of a future. Of course looking back over 10 years makes it almost too easy to poke fun, but predicting that HDTVs would still cost $2000 in 2008 seems pretty silly about now. What’s worse is the prediction that only one million sets would be sold by 2003, while the number ended up being 3.4 million. Looking back at all of this makes us wonder about all the 3D predictions we’ve seen lately, because if consumers went that crazy about going from 480i to 1080p, just imagine how they’ll feel about adding a third dimension.

It’s amazing to think about how far HDTV has come up until now, and how far it still will go in the future. More dissecting of this report is here.