A surge in the conversion of secondary TV sets has boosted the total number of UK digitally-enabled TV sets to 80 per cent, new Ofcom research reveals today.

Ofcom’s Digital TV Progress Report for the second quarter of 2009 shows that 24.3 million secondary TV sets had been converted to digital by the end of June – up by 15 percentage points in a year.

In total, nine out of ten main television sets are now connected to a digital decoder as the Granada region prepares to begin switchover in November.

Areas in the UK that have already switched to digital include the Border area, the West Country and south and west Wales .

Bundling

The rest of the UK will switch to digital between now and the end of 2012.

The report also reveals that more consumers are bundling their communications services with the same supplier.

By the end of the quarter, 16 per cent of BSkyB customers (1.5 million subscribers) took three services – TV, broadband and home phone – up from 11 per cent last year.

The number of Virgin customers taking three services or more reached a new high of 58 per cent,, up from 53 per cent the previous quarter.

Integrated digital TVs

Our research found that there were 29.7 million Freeview-enabled sets, of which 9.9 million were primary and almost 19.8 million were secondary sets.

Over 680,000 Freeview set-top boxes were sold in the three months to June, down 25 per cent on last year as integrated digital TVs (IDTV) have become increasingly popular.

Year on year IDTV sales were up by 590,000 or 41 per cent and total IDTV sales have now reached almost 22 million and are likely to overtake those of set-top boxes (24 million) this year.

You can read more about how digital satellite services and other pay TV services performed during the quarter in our Digital TV Progress Report.

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Tags: Digital switchover, Digital TV, Freeview, Sky, TV, Virgin