For many years, and even nowadays, in our technologically-advanced era, hearsay remains one of the best information channels out there. Moreover, it is also what, in many cases, drives the consumer world. That's because there are quite a lot of people out there who don't know exactly what HD, PDP, HDMI, LCD, upscaling, 1080p, FullHD, BonusView, etc. really mean, but since everyone's talking about them (on TV, on the Internet, in the newspapers, etc.), there must be something to them. So, whenever they want to change their old, analog TV, they go out and search for a product matching some of the "criteria" mentioned above.

Probably this is the reason why, as a study from iSupply informs us, in 2008, the shipments of HDTVs have finally surpassed those of standard-definition TVs. There are several reasons for this situation, besides the one mentioned above. For example, since the format war has ended, everyone can now purchase a Blu-ray player without fearing that it will become obsolete. And what's the point of having such a device (or any other HD signal source, for that matter), if you don't have an HDTV to watch it on?

It's also interesting to mention that predictions for the future, as far as HDTVs are concerned, are also quite bright. Thus, the same source mentioned above stated that the shipments of high-definition television sets are likely to increase quite a lot over the next few years, reaching an estimate of 241.2 millions by 2012.

Quite obviously, in the same interval, the sales of standard-definition TVs will decrease accordingly, simply because there won't be any demand for them. After all, when the prices of high-definition TVs have reached such a low level as to be affordable for a very wide range of consumers, who'd be crazy enough to go for those old standard-def models?

We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is .