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Overview

1.1 In the three months to the end of March 2007 (Q1) there were nearly 870,000 net UK household conversions to digital television (DTV), following 1,000,000 additions in the previous quarter. The DTT equipment market also had a strong quarter, with 1.95 million units sold, while the digital cable and satellite platforms together added over 175,000 digital households.

1.2 This means that 80.5% of households now receive digital television services on their primary set, up 3.2 percentage points since December 2006.

1.3 And, with a further 1.2% of households subscribing to analogue cable, the total number of homes receiving multi-channel television at the end of Q1 2007 has risen to 81.7%.

Other key findings

1.4 Other key findings in the first quarter of 2007 include:

• The number of households with digital TV equipment connected to their main television stood at over 20.4 million by the end of the period.
• The 1.95 million sales of DTT units in Q1 was second only to the Q4 2006 figure of 2.4m units; year on year the figure was 61% higher, fuelled by the growing availability of integrated digital televisions (IDTVs), with sales of almost 900,000 in Q1.
• 81% of the growth in digital TV homes was accounted for by new DTT-only households, which increased by 670,000 to more than 8,370,000 during the quarter.
• We estimate that there are also around 885,000 free-to-view digital satellite homes, which brings the total number of free-to-view digital households to almost 9.3 million
• The number of BSkyB subscribers rose by 32,020 to over 8 million by the end of the quarter. When we include free-to-view satellite viewers, total satellite homes reach almost 8.9 million.
• Net cable subscriber numbers rose by 36,100 during the quarter, to nearly 3.4 million. Digital cable subscribers went up by over 75,000 and now account for almost 3.1 million, or around 91%, of all cable subscriptions.

1.5 In calculating platform totals in the report, DTT-only homes are defined as those households where DTT is the only digital TV platform in the home. A household with satellite or cable on the main TV set and DTT on a second set is counted as a satellite or cable home. Figures for all homes with DTT are included in section 3 of the report.

The full document is available below

• Digital Progress Report - Digital TV, Q1 2007 [pdf]
  Full Print Version

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