80% of UK TVs now digital

New figures from Ofcom reveal that the total number of digitally-enabled TV sets in the UK hit 80% by the end of June, boosted by a surge in the conversion of secondary sets.

Ofcom’s latest Digital TV Progress Report for Q2 2009 shows that 24.3 million secondary TV sets had been converted to digital by the end of June, up by 15 percentage points in a year.

With the Granada region preparing for digital switchover in November, the Ofcom figures show that, in total, nine out of ten (89.8%) of main UK television sets are now connected to a digital decoder.

By the end of the second quarter there were 29.7 million digital terrestrial television (DTT) enabled sets, of which 9.9 million were primary and almost 19.8 million were secondary sets.

Freeview set-top boxes accounted for over 680,000 sales in the quarter, a 25% year on year fall. The regulator said that this is due to the increasing popularity of integrated digital TVs (IDTV). IDTV sales were up by 590,000, or 41% year on year. Cumulative sales of IDTVs have now reached almost 22 million.

Looking at digital satellite and other pay-TV services, BSkyB’s results for the second quarter showed a 124,000 increase in subscriptions to its television service, taking its total UK and Republic of Ireland subscriber base to 9.4 million, up 462,000 over the past year.

Around 860,000 homes were subscribing to other pay TV platforms in the second quarter with BT Vision subscribers reaching 433,000 by June 2009, and Top Up TV and Tiscali TV making up the remainder.

Elsewhere, Freesat – the joint satellite service from the BBC and ITV – saw total cumulative retail sales reach 450,000 units by the end of June 2009, up from 350,000 units in Q1.

Virgin Media’s quarterly results revealed additions of 32,900 digital television subscribers, while over half (55%) of its digital subscriber base was using its video on demand service on a monthly basis during the quarter.