Digital television penetration has reached almost 60% of UK households, with Ofcom revealing that in quarter four of last year, 59.4% of homes received digital television, an increase of 3.5% from 55.9% at 30 September 2004.
Ofcom’s Digital Television Update for the fourth quarter of 2004 reveals that, by 31 December 2004, the total number of digital television households grew by 914,980 to 14,77 million, representing growth over the quarter of 6.6%. BSkyB added 177,000 subscribers in Q4 2004, bringing its total for 2004 up to 7,26 million.
Ofcom estimates that the number of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) households in the UK by the end of December 2004 was around 4,59 million, an increase of 678,000 from 3,91 million at the end of September 2004.
There are currently almost five million free-to-view digital households, consisting of both Freeview viewers and free-to-view digital satellite homes, while subscribers to cable television remain at around 3.3 million.
Digital cable accounts for just over 2.5 million of the total number of UK digital households, representing 17% of digital homes, with 11,500 new additions in the last quarter of 2004.
The digital television update shows that 3.2% of households continue to subscribe to analogue cable during last quarter of 2004, bring the total proportion of households receiving some form of multi-channel television to just over 63%.
Earlier this month, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) also revealed a dramatic take up in digital technology across Britain over the last quarter of 2004, resulting in over half of all UK home having the new technology (see IPA Reports Over Half Of UK Homes Have Digital TV).
Although many countries have experienced impressive growth in the popularity of digital television, no country is expected to have 100% digital penetration until 2014, according to a report at the end of last year from Informa Media Group (see Full Digital TV Penetration Expected To Begin In 2014).
The Asia Pacific region is forecast to reach 606 million TV households by 2010, an increase of 130 million since 1995, according to new research from Informa Telecoms & Media (see Strong Digital TV Penetration Forecast For Asia Pacific).
The Asia Pacific Television – Ninth Edition report predicts that out of the total for 2010, 46% of consumers will subscribe to a cable, 3% to digital DHT packages and 2% to broadband television services, while 3% will receive DTT signals.
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