Digital television in Western Europe is reaching a decisive milestone this month, overtaking the analogue system for the first time, according to new research from e-Media Institute.
There are now about 83 million households in the region’s 20 countries receiving digital television signals out of a total of 166 million TV households, says e-Media Institute. At the end of June 2007, families equipped to watch digital TV made up 48% of the total in Western Europe.
However, European countries are moving towards a digital future at varying speeds: while some countries (the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland) have already switched off their analogue television signal, others are making slower progress towards full digitalisation.
Italy is the only country where the take-up of digital TV is slowing: the country has slipped behind its neighbours France and Spain in terms of digital penetration and, in the first half of 2007, was 19th out of 20 in the region in terms of growth in the number of digital TV households (5.2%).
As regards pay television, e-Media says that satellite is still the major platform for services, with more than 23 million subscribers. As of the end of June 2007, the number of satellite pay-TV subscribers in Western Europe increased 6.5% from a year earlier.
Satellite-TV operators are also benefiting from increased sales of their channel packages on other, fast-growing platforms. IPTV and digital terrestrial television have seen high growth rates in the first six months of the year, even though the number of subscribers to pay-TV services on these platforms is low in absolute terms (3.8 million and 3.5 million respectively).
France, with two million subscribers to pay-TV via ADSL as of end-June, remains the main – almost only – success story for IPTV in Europe. It is trailed by Spain with almost 500,000 subscribers.
UK household take-up of digital television, via Freeview, digital satellite or cable TV, grew to almost 85% to the end of June 2007, according to recent research from Ofcom (see Digital TV Penetration Reaches Almost 85%).
A report from Datamonitor published at the end of July forecast that digital TV services will around 165 million homes in Western Europe and the US by 2012 (see Digital TV To Reach 165 Million Homes).
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