1m more homes go digital

Over 1 million homes net converted to digital television in the fourth quarter of 2006, Ofcom has revealed.

The increase was slightly up on the 0.8m rise in the number of digital TV homes in the previous quarter and brings the total percentage of UK households now receiving digital TV services on their main television set to 77.2%.

70% of the growth can be attributed to new digital terrestrial-only households, which now total 7.7m. 2.4m digital terrestrial units were sold during the quarter, with takeup of integrated digital TV sets once again increasing.

At the end of 2006 Ofcom estimated that 19.55m homes in the UK had some form of digital television. Of those, 7.7m were digital terrestrial-only, 0.82m had free-to-view digital satellite, 7.975m subscribed to Sky, 3.01m took digital cable, and 43,000 subscribed to Tiscali's TV over ADSL service previously known as Homechoice. There are also 349,154 analogue cable subscribers, bringing the total percentage of UK households with some form of multichannel TV to 78.6%.

In terms of each platform's market share of main television sets, Sky's 31.5% share is very close to digital terrestrial's 30.4%. Analogue terrestrial still has a significant 21.4% share while all cable accounts for 13.3%. The remainder consists of free-to-view satellite (3.2%) and TV over ADSL (0.2%).

However, of all UK TV sets, analogue terrestrial still leads with a 51.5% share. Digital terrestrial has a 25.6% share while Sky has 15.3%. Cable has 6.1% while free-to-view satellite and TV over ADSL have 1.4% and 0.1% of the market respectively. Ofcom has noted a dramatic increase in the conversion rate of secondary TV sets to digital, with data from platform operators, GfK research and Ofcom's own market estimates indicating a 50% increase in conversions during 2006.