HD Ready – Our Explanation of What HD Ready Means

The phrase “HD Ready” causes much confusion. Here’s our simple guide to understanding the term “HD Ready”, and what it means to your high definition viewing

 

What is “HD Ready”?

When you buy a new TV set, you may find that it’s listed as “HD Ready”. Here’s what “HD Ready” means, and does not mean:

HD Ready means: An HD-Ready TV set is capable of displaying a high definition TV picture, when connected to an HD source.

HD Ready does not mean: A TV has a built-in HD TV receiver (e.g. Sky HD, Freesat HD, Freeview HD)

 

The confusion:

For many, the confusion comes when they find that the “HD Ready” TV set they bought a while back can’t get HD TV channels without having to buy an HD receiver – even though the TV set has “HD-Ready” on it, it can’t get HD without the expense of buying an HD receiver.

The phrase chosen by the industry, “HD Ready”, is not the best phrase in the world, and its easy to see how some consumers could be confused.

It’s hard to find a good comparison to offer here, but here are two fairly flippant examples to illustrate the point:

• A battery-powered radio doesn’t necessarily come with batteries
• A credit card wallet doesn’t actually come with credit cards
• An upgradeable airline ticket doesn’t necessarily come upgraded to first class as standard
• A TV that has enough pixels for HD, doesn’t necessarily come with a Sky HD receiver or BluRay player built in

 

High Definition content

To watch HD content on an HD-Ready TV, you need some kind of HD source. This could be:

• An HD TV receiver – Such as a Virgin V+ box, a Sky+HD box, a Freesat HD receiver or a Freeview HD receiver
• A High Definition disc player – a Blu-Ray disk player
• Some games consoles – Games consoles that output HD, such as the Microsoft X-Box 360 or the Sony Playstation 3)

 

Other HD Terms?

• See our HD TV Basics page for help with terms like “Full HD”