To make sure they have their wares in the digital living room, the PC and software industries are focusing efforts on developing set-top boxes and software. And of course, TV broadcasters need a committment from movie and TV studios to help develop DTV programming, but those content providers are waiting until copyright concerns are addressed. Such a move means that at first images on the screen will look only somewhat brighter and somewhat clearer than they would using analog signals. For now, you can expect interactivity over your HDTV setup to be basic. Down the road, content providers expect to integrate the Internet and television by adding interactive elements to TV programming, in the form of links between a TV show and a related Web site.
More advanced functionality is on the way.
The answer is that they probably are, if only because television is our national pastime. But currently, the high price of HDTV sets prohibits adoption of the new technology. Find out how.