84% of UK households have digital TV

84% of UK households now receive digital TV on their primary television set, Ofcom revealed today.

The regulator's quarterly digital TV report indicated that digital TV penetration in the second quarter of 2007 was up 3.5 percentage points from 80.5% in the year's first quarter.

Growth in digital TV penetration was mainly driven by continued strong take-up of Freeview; the number of digital terrestrial-only homes stood at 9.14m at the end of the second quarter, up over 750,000 since the end of the first quarter. 60,000 households added free-to-view digital satellite, and 44,200 homes took up digital cable (only 6,600 of that figure is attributable to new subscriptions, with growth primarily coming from analogue cable migrations). Sky added 77,000 homes in the quarter while growth in TV over ADSL services was flat. Taking the remaining 272,454 analogue cable homes into account, multichannel penetration in the UK stood at 85% at the end of the second quarter, accounting for over 21.6m homes.

Taking all TV sets in a home - such as smaller secondary and tertiary sets - into account, multichannel services are now received on over half of them. Ofcom estimates that out of 60m total TV sets in the country, 46.4% of them receive only analogue terrestrial services. 30% are equipped to receive Freeview, 15.7% are hooked up to Sky, and 6.2% are attached to a second cable box. The remainder is made up of TVs connected to free to view satellite and ADSL TV services. Ofcom noted that conversion of secondary TV sets has increased by 38% over the last year.