One third of the 3.3 million Austrian television homes now watch digital television, according to the regulatory body RTR (Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH). The introduction of DTT only began last October, but has enjoyed a fast take-up with about 40% of people buying an MHP enabled receiver. At the moment some 150,000 DTT sets have been sold, 60.000 of which have interactive capabilities. Buyers of the interactive boxes were given a subsidy of €40 each making these almost the same price as simple zapper boxes.
When DTT was introduced about 1.3 million homes were reliant on analogue terrestrial reception. Interestingly, many of these terrestrial homes seem now to have chosen digital DTH reception as a replacement with the number of satellite homes rising by almost 500,000 since the beginning of the year. Although no exact figures are yet available this seems to point to the direction that viewers find the multchannel offer from satellite more attractive than DTT with just three channels (ORF1, ORF2 and ATV) currently available.
