Simply because users “want” something does not mean they will spend the money to adopt it. It’s the same idea that Flash will be adopted in the living room just because consumers “want” to see web video on their TV, but the question is whether or not they are willing to pay for the content.

The problem here is not whether or not consumers want better quality video, they all do, they problem is that content owners don’t provide most of their inventory in HD quality as they can’t monetize their content.

For all the talk of quality, why isn’t every content owner encoding their content at 1.5Mbps today? Because they can’t afford the bandwidth bill. What I don’t see IDC saying is how that will be any different in 2012 since even years from now, most content owners still won’t have content people are willing to buy, no matter what quality it is in.

The market size is going to jump from $32M to $2.2B in four years? That’s simply unrealistic. And how do the advertising revenue numbers tie into this? What does this mean?

• In 2008, IDC found online video (both HD and standard definition) revenue from sales to be $1.23 billion and from advertising to be $900 million.

What does advertising have to do with HD? Is this online video advertising revenue? And if so, how is it defined? If IDC is saying the online video advertising market was $900M last year, that’s almost double what eMarketer says it was, cutting their original projection from $1.4B to $505M for 2008. I don’t know what the size truly is, but there is a big gap in those numbers.