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09|12|05

65.9% of UK households now watching digital television

Ofcom today publishes its Digital Television Update for the third quarter of 2005. The report examines data provided by the main digital television platform providers for the July-September period.

The update shows that as of 30 September 2005 digital television was viewed in 65.9% of UK households, up from 63.0% in the previous quarter.

Key trends include:

TOTAL DIGITAL TELEVISION VIEWING

• By 30 September 2005, the total number of households viewing digital television grew by more than 760,000 to almost 16.5 million.
• In total there are now more than 6.3 million free-to-view digital households (Freeview homes plus free-to-view satellite homes). [Source: Ofcom market estimates]

DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL TELEVISION (FREEVIEW)

• There were more than one million sales of Freeview (Digital Terrestrial Television or DTT) set-top boxes and televisions with integrated DTT tuners during the quarter. [Source: Freeview Q3 2005 sales figures].
• This is a 55% increase year-on-year on Q3 2004, when there were 660,000 DTT sales.
• The number of households with Freeview as their only source of digital television viewing is estimated to have grown to around 5,775,000 by the end of September 2005 - up by around 600,000 homes during the quarter. [Source: Ofcom market estimates,GfK]

DIGITAL SATELLITE TELEVISION

• BSkyB added 48,000 subscribers, bringing its total number of UK subscribers to 7,472,000 at the end of Q3 2005. [Source: BSkyB results Q3 2005]
• Latest estimates suggest there are also around 545,000 free-to-view digital satellite homes. This figure includes viewers who are no longer BSkyB subscribers but still receive the public service channels through their set-top box. Also included in this figure are the “Solus” viewers who are able to receive the public service channels through this scheme. [Source: Ofcom market estimates]

DIGITAL CABLE TELEVISION

• Digital cable subscribers increased by more than 43,300 in the quarter and now account for more than 2.6 million of the total cable television homes. The total number of subscribers to analogue and digital cable television saw a slight decrease during the quarter and is now just below 3.3 million. This was as a result of a fall in analogue cable subscribers which outweighed an increase in digital cable subscriptions. [Source: cable company results Q3]

The full Ofcom Digital Television Update – Q3 2005, can be found online at:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtu_2005_q3/

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