At Joan Cramer’s home in Jupiter, Florida, there’s a 61-inch high-definition TV in the media room and a 51-incher in the bedroom. She pays extra to DirecTV Group Inc. for HD channels and the “NFL Sunday Ticket” football package so her family can watch their beloved Cleveland Browns. One slight problem: The Browns are seldom on in high definition.

Only four of Cleveland’s 13 games this year have been available in high definition, and just five of the National Football League team’s 16 games last season were in HD.

“It’s been useless for us because we want to watch the Browns in HD,” says Mrs. Cramer, a 66-year-old Cleveland native whose family owned Browns season tickets for 45 years.

A warning to fans who plan to buy a TV before Christmas: Watching sports in HD is no slam dunk. Many nationally televised sports events are now available in HD, but most games are still beamed by regional cable sports networks or independent stations that don’t yet broadcast in high definition.

The amount of HD coverage varies widely depending on the team and region, but many popular sports franchises remain tough to see in HD. The National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers, for example, will have only about half of their games in HD this season. The primary broadcaster for baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals showed just 18 games in HD last season — a fraction of the network’s 110-game TV schedule. “The industry has done a pretty poor job,” admits Randy Freer, chief operations officer for Fox Sports Networks, which owns 18 cable sports channels around the country. “There’s a fair amount of confusion in the marketplace.”

It’s a particularly important issue right now. For the fourth quarter, industry analysts are forecasting sales of about three million HDTV units, more than twice the number sold during the year-earlier period. Nearly 33 million US households, or about 30 percent of the market, are expected to have an HDTV by year end, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. The growth has been sparked by a price war among manufacturers and retailers.

Sports is a big part of the HD pitch. Dozens of ads tout the appeal of watching games in HD, and ESPN, the cable sports behemoth, has maintained a 24-hour HD channel since 2003, long before most other networks. But finding games in HD can be an exercise in remote-control frustration. Cable systems often put HD sports broadcasts on random channels that aren’t well-marked or publicised. Contrary to what many consumers are told, there is no deadline for networks to begin broadcasting in HD. The only Federal Communications Commission requirement is for stations to transmit signals in a digital format by 2009 — but going digital doesn’t mean going HD.

Further confusing matters: Millions of viewers have seen their cable systems change ownership — and their channel lineups overhauled — since federal regulators approved Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp.’s $17 billion purchase of Adelphia Communication Corp.’s cable assets. As part of the deal, Comcast and Time Warner swapped systems in Dallas, Cleveland, Boston and Los Angeles, and with all of the changes, there have been communication gaffes regarding HD programming. “We’re still in the middle of making a lot of changes,” says a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles.

Jeffrey Alan, a 34-year-old tax lawyer in Houston, got his first HD set in 2004, but became frustrated by the lack of information about which games were available in HD. So he began contacting networks and local stations directly, and set up a Web site — hdsportsguide.com — that posts schedules of all the HD sports broadcasts around the country. “I feel like a detective,” Mr. Alan says, who estimates that he spends about seven hours a week hounding TV officials.

There are several factors limiting the amount of HD content. HD broadcasts contain far more lines of picture resolution and audio information than regular programs, so they’re more expensive to transmit and tax the existing bandwidth of cable systems and satellite providers. Cable systems are particularly hard-hit because they use the same wires to deliver TV, Internet, video-on-demand, and phone services to customers — and therefore have less room for HD signals.

Satellite services like DirecTV and Dish Network face the same issue: On Sundays during the NFL season, DirecTV usually has to take one of its HD channels off the air in order to free up space to show NFL games in HD.

TV networks have their own cost and logistical hurdles. An HD sports broadcast is up to 30 percent more expensive to produce than a standard telecast, according to TV executives. There is also an industrywide shortage of high-definition broadcast trucks, so during busy periods it’s nearly impossible to broadcast every desirable game in HD. “You have to make choices,” says Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning and policy for CBS, which is producing about half of its NFL schedule in HD, but plans to telecast all of its 2007 golf tournaments in HD.

To be sure, the amount of HD sports coverage has grown exponentially. Every NBA game televised by ESPN, ABC, and TNT this season will be available in HD, and Fox Sport Networks’ regional channels — which own the local cable rights to roughly two-thirds of all the teams in the NBA, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball — recently pledged to double their number of HD broadcasts. DirecTV plans to launch two additional satellites sometime next year, a move the company says will give it bandwidth for 150 additional HD channels.

In baseball, both the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are widely available in HD, largely because both clubs own TV networks. Last season, the Yankees’ YES Network showed nearly its entire broadcast schedule — about 125 games — in HD, and the network’s stand-alone HD channel will be available on all New York-area cable systems by April. (On DirecTV, New York-area viewers with HD service can access real-time statistics and other interactive options on YES.)

Consumers also have to pay more attention. Many HDTV owners can’t even watch HD programming because they haven’t signed up for upgraded service from their cable or satellite provider — and therefore aren’t receiving HD channels.

Tech-savvy sports fans, of course, just want to see as many games as possible in HD. Jeff Homberger, a 22-year-old from Belleville, Michigan, follows the TV industry closely — he has tracked how many times each NFL team has appeared in HD over the past three seasons. Earlier this year, his local cable sports network, FSN Detroit, unveiled an HD channel and began broadcasting Detroit Tigers games in high definition. Unfortunately, his Comcast cable system didn’t add the channel until after the baseball season.

“It was one of my frustrations over the summer,” he says. “I’ll tune into a sport just because I see it in HD.”