Big news of the day is that Sky TV has finally confirmed it's going high definition "in the next eighteen to twenty-four months." It's yet to be decided which standard - 1920x1080i or 1280x720p - will be adopted. There's another technical issue, too. Your TV will naturally have to be high def capable, but it will also have to be HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) compatible, and not all the expensive big screen tellys sold in this country are.

As the name implies, HDCP is a copy protection system that lets content providers place a 'tag' into their programmes (Sky's data stream for instance). It requires a digital connection such as DVI or, more commonly, HDMI to work, so we'd deduce that Sky's HD set top box won't work on any TV that only has component inputs (which can carry an HD signal but not the copy protected one).

Sky's move is a welcome one, though with no details about what it will cost punters to sign up (and you'd better believe it will cost a premium), we're still being cautiously welcoming. The move is also a predictable one, given that TVNZ and TV3 are (still) both working on plans to go digital; going HD is Sky's way of upping the ante. And with the explosion in the consumer electronics market for big, flat panel TVs (though as we've noted, not necessarily fully-specced big, flat panel TVs), we can't help thinking TVNZ, TV3 and the government - which for some reason wants all broadcasters to go digital - have jumped on the wrong boat here...