UK digital TV reaches 80 per cent penetration

Almost 870,000 net conversions to digital TV were made in the three months to the end of March, bringing the total number of UK households with digital TV on their main TV display to 20.4 million, representing 80.5% of households. At the same time the Freeview digital terrestrial platform has now overtaken Sky Digital.

According to Ofcom’s latest report on digital TV penetration, DTT again drove sales with 1.95 million units sold with the combined cable and satellite platforms adding an additional 175,000 digital households. The DTT figure is the second highest ever, second only to the 2.4 million units sold in the pre-Christmas quarter, 900,000 integrated digital televisions contributing to DTT’s popularity.

The net increase of 670,000 DTT-only households brought the number to 8,370,000. The number of Sky Digital subscribers is now over 8 million and digital satellite as a whole accounts for 8.9 million viewers when free-to-air estimates are included,

Digital cable is now in 3.1 million homes, an increase of 71,000 on the quarter, out of a total base of almost 3.4 million cable homes.