DTT set-top sales fall as IDTV takes over

The number of standalone receivers sold for Freeview reception fell by 28% on the quarter, according to the Communications Market Report, released today by the regulator Ofcom.

Of the 3.4 million sales of DTT-enabled equipment in the first quarter, Integrated Digital Televisions (IDTVs) accounted for almost 73%. Freeview set-top boxes represented around 900,000 sales.

However, the number of DTT only households rose by just 15,000 in Q1, with 9.8 million out of the UK’s 22.7 million digital TV homes relying on DTT reception alone.

89.6% of UK homes are now capable of receiving multichannel television on their main sets, an increase of 0.7 percentage points (pp) on the quarter and 2.4pp year-on-year. 61% of secondary sets have now been converted, an increase of around 8pp on the year.

Another significant figure is a fall in the number of homes that receive free-to-view satellite transmissions, down by 94,000 to 503,000, the fourth successive fall. Ofcom says that sales data for Freesat shows 350,000 units had been sold by the end of March, up from 233,000 in Q4. Around three quarters of Freesat product sold is HD compatible.

Top Up TV halved its subscriber base on the quarter from 400,000 to 200,000, although the regulator cautions against reading too much into the figures for the smaller platforms, due to the size of the sample.