The majority (51.2%) of former DVB-T users in Germany have made the move to successor system DVB-T2/HEVC and continue to receive their TV channels terrestrially.
Less than a quarter of the affected households (23.4%) have opted for other transmission infrastructures. The winner is DTH satellite reception which 11.5% of the former DVB-T households decided to use – probably because the commercial channels continue to be available free-of-charge this way. 7% signed up for a cable TV subscription, 3% opted for a streaming provider such as Zattoo, Magine TV or TV Spielfilm live and 2% became IPTV customers.
16.9% of the former DVB-T viewers now use another TV reception method available in their household, 5.5% are still evaluating the different options and 1.5% don’t watch television any more.
That’s the result of a survey market research institute TNS Infratest conducted among 200 former DVB-T users on behalf of Zattoo between April 3 and 5, 2017.
“Zattoo also benefitted from the switchover. In Q1 2017, we managed to win over 300,000 new users including 60,000 alone in the week of March 29,” said Jörg Meyer, Chief Officer Content & Consumer at Zattoo. “The growth for Zattoo increasingly takes place on the large screen. The number of hours of Zattoo usage on connected TV sets has increased by more than 40% in December 2016 alone.”
The survey also focused on the question whether the new DVB-T2 households are prepared to pay for reception of the commercial channels offered on the Freenet TV platform for €5.75 per month. 41.9% don’t want to spend money on Freenet TV. 36.2% are willing to pay, further 20% possibly.
On March 31, 2017, around 160,000 households were already signed up for Freenet TV despite the fee-based period not starting until July 1. Freenet TV expects to reach more than one million paying customers by the end of 2018.
