LAS VEGAS -- High-definition television will hit the airwaves in Baltimore and many other cities next fall. The question is who will be watching it -- and what they'll be using to watch.
With sets priced at $4,000 and up, HDTV is beyond the reach of the average couch potato, and few TV industry analysts believe the technology will take off quickly among consumers.
But several high-technology companies displaying their wares here at the annual Comdex computer show are betting that they deliver on the promise of crisper pictures and better sound with inexpensive circuit boards that transform home computers into HDTV sets.
They're hoping they can establish the PC as a cheap alternative for watching HDTV broadcasts and steal market share from HDTV makers.
"We believe the PC will make its move into the living room as the rightful center of digital information and entertainment in the home," said Ken Plotkin, vice president of marketing at Hauppauge Computer Works.
Hauppauge, a manufacturer of computer video cards, unveiled plans this week for a digital television tuner card for personal computers called WinTV-D. The card will be available in the first half of 1999 and cost less than $200, company officials said.
"Now you don't have to wait until prices on HDTV sets come down. You can start watching digital television right away," said Hauppauge market strategist Andrew Luan.
Real HDTV sets will have much larger screens than the average computer monitor, which measures only 15 to 17 inches diagonally. But Luan says a digital TV tuner card -- combined with a monitor's inherent, high-resolution display capability -- will allow a PC to match a HDTV set's stellar image quality.
Some computer makers are pushing HDTV capability to lure consumers, too. Compaq Computer Corp. this week unveiled plans to make similar hardware for its Presario personal computers. Compaq says its technology could be available as early as next spring and add about $800 to the cost of a computer -- not cheap but still only a fraction of the cost of a dedicated HDTV set.
Meanwhile, Panasonic, Phillips Semiconductors and Intel Corp. have announced that they are working on their digital tuner technology of their own.
The marriage of computers and digital TV sets is a natural one. HDTV technology allows broadcasters to send Web pages and other digital content along with the television picture, much as closed-captioning information is paired with analog television signals today.
