Television technology marched forward aggressively in 2004 as high-definition television (HDTV) and various services for time-shifting programs made a push toward the mainstream. "Consumers will have more flexibility over what they watch and when they watch it," said Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com. Swann pegged growing usage of HDTV, digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo, and on-demand video service as the year's most important TV trends.

Although HDTV remained a prohibitively expensive proposition for most consumers, prices for the necessary equipment began to decline significantly in 2004, and the number of high-definition programs that were being offered grew. The telecasting of sports was a key factor in driving the growth, experts said. For example, Cox Cable in San Diego, Calif., saw its "take rate" for high-definition services jump 40% after San Diego Padres baseball games began to be offered in the new, more vivid format.

The use of DVRs, long predicted as the wave of TV's future, finally began to climb in 2004, largely because cable-TV operators began to offer them packaged inside their cable boxes. This arrangement was simpler than TiVo's, which typically required users to purchase and install a separate audio-video appliance. Independent industry analysts predicted that the number of DVR-equipped homes would explode from 7 million at the end of 2004 to some 30 million, or close to one-third of American households, within four years. Also popular were new video-on-demand cable-TV services, which allowed a user to call up an episode of HBO's The Sopranos, for example, from an on-screen menu and watch it immediately rather than wait for the show to appear on the regular HBO schedule. The two technologies together were forcing networks and advertising agencies to rethink the traditional 30-second TV advertisement.

On the basis of its tracking of DVR usage by its 800,000 customers, TiVo revealed that the most-watched Olympic moment was gymnast Paul Hamm's high-bar performance. The most-replayed Super Bowl moment was Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." In October Nielsen Media Research, the company that provided the Nielsen ratings, began culling data on DVR use from 5,000-10,000 TiVo households that had agreed to participate. TiVo faced off against operators that provided cable and satellite services with DVR functions. Hollywood studios and the U.S. National Football League blocked TiVo from allowing its subscribers to transfer recorded shows to other devices, but TiVo and Netflix agreed to develop a service for customers to rent videos by downloading them through TiVo.

Microsoft Corp. unveiled MSN TV2, made by Thomson for RCA, which offered a subscription package that included MSN, NBC, Discovery Channel, and Fox Sports. At the same time, Microsoft introduced the new Windows XP Media Center software, which made it possible for a PC to function as a photo album, jukebox, DVD player, TV receiver, and DVR.

In August Toshiba introduced Qosmio, the first laptop integrated with audio and video features, DVD drive, TV tuner with a no-waiting TV mode, enhanced speakers, and near-TV-quality display. The Samsung MM-A700 cellphone used MobiTV technology to function as a TV. It could show news updates, sports clips, weather forecasts, music videos, and cartoons from 14 cable stations of streaming video provided by the Sprint network. Samsung also launched HDTV with a picture-enhancing feature called DNIe (digital natural image engine). Ahead of the holidays personal computer giant Dell released its first plasma-screen TV. It had released its first LCD (liquid-crystal display) TV in December 2003. Sharp, Japan's top maker of LCD panels, announced its latest product, a 114-cm (45-in) LCD TV, to keep up with demands for 102-cm (40-in) or larger flat TVs. Earlier, it had introduced the world's first wireless flat-panel TV, the Aquos LC-15L1U-S, with a 38-cm (15-in) display screen and built-in battery.

Patients in 32 British hospitals complained about TV sets in their rooms having no "off" switch. Even when they refused to subscribe, the TVs blared ads for the service and messages from hospital authorities. Television service, installed by private firm Patientline, cost patients $5.75 per day.