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Home > Media and Analysts > News Release Archive > 2007 > Sep > 20/09/07
20|09|07
Digital TV in 85% of homes as switchover start begins
The total number of multichannel households in the UK has reached 21.4 million homes, 85% of the UK total, according to research published today by Ofcom. This is up 13 percentage points over the year – the strongest twelve months’ growth to date.
Ofcom’s Digital Television Progress Report for the second quarter of 2007 (April-June) also shows that digital terrestrial television accounted for 81% (763,000) of the growth in the digital television market during the quarter.
Key trends for the second quarter of 2007 include:
- In total, almost 1.9 million Freeview devices (set-top-boxes plus integrated digital televisions) were sold during the quarter, up from 1.2 million in the second quarter of 2006 (52% rise year-on-year). This was the fourth highest sales quarter so far for Freeview with 7.6 million units being sold over the past year compared to 5.4 million in 2006.
- 12.9 million homes are now viewing television on at least one Freeview device, an increase of around 1.2 million more than at the end of the previous quarter.
- 84% of households now receive digital television services on their primary set, up 3.5 percentage points since March this year.
DIGITAL SATELLITE TELEVISION – Sky subscribers and free-to-view satellite services
- Sky grew its customer base by 77,000 during the quarter, to nearly 8.1 million with over 336,000 additions year on year. When we include free-to-view satellite viewers, total satellite homes reach 9 million.
- Sky’s High Definition service added 48,000 subscribers taking the total number to nearly 300,000.
- Almost 30% (2.37million) of all Sky customers now subscribe to Sky’s personal video recorder service, up from 2.17 million in Q4 2006.
CABLE TELEVISION – Virgin Media services plus others
- The total number of homes with cable continued to rise with over 3.4 million subscribers at the end of the quarter.
- Cable saw the highest penetration since the second quarter of 2004 accounting for 13.4% of homes
- By the end of the quarter almost 167,000 Virgin Media subscribers were using its personal video recorder service.
Chief Executive Ed Richards said: "More than four in five UK households are now enjoying the benefits of digital television. It’s extremely encouraging that we are continuing to see the market grow strongly with less than a month until Whitehaven becomes the first place to fully switch to digital television."
The full report is available at:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtv_2007_q2/dtvq207.pdf
Ends.
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