A 15 percentage point increase in the conversion of secondary television sets over the past 12 months has taken the proportion of UK sets that have been digitally enabled to 80%.
The Digital Progress Report, issued by the regulator Ofcom, for the second quarter of 2009 shows that by the end of June 24.3 million secondary sets had been converted. Until recently television sets in the nation’s kitchens and bedrooms had been a cause for concern in the digital switchover process.
The Granada television region in North West Britain that will complete analogue switch off on November 30 already has nine out of ten of its main television sets converted for digital.
9.7 million homes now receive Freeview as their main source of digital reception out of 22.8m, the rise of 800,000 homes coming from either pay-TV services or Freesat.
According to the data 700,000 homes now receive a free-to-air satellite service, not including those receiving (often grey-market) satellite packages from overseas. This represents an increase of 200,000 on the last quarter. Freesat, which has subsequently released updated figures of 600,000, had sold 450,000 by the end of the quarter. The numbers for free-to-air reception still appear to be surprisingly low, despite Ofcom’s caution over the small sample size.
