25.2 million households in Germany receive HDTV. This corresponds with a growth of the share of HD households among German TV households from 53.1% to 65.7% within one year.
The second strong growth area is video-on-demand (VOD): More than one third of the German population uses these services. These are two key results from the Digitisation Report 2017 unveiled by the German media authorities in Berlin today.
A reason for the HD growth is the switchover to DVB-T2 HD on DTT which took place in many urban areas on March 29, 2017. For the first time, around 2 million households now receive HDTV terrestrially.
In total, 7.4% of German TV households use DTT, followed by IPTV which slightly grew to 6.9%. The two top positions remain unchanged with cable (45.9%) and satellite (45.7%).
Among the IPTV households, 83.4% receive HDTV, followed by DTT households (69.6%), satellite households (67.2%) and cable households (58.3%).
11.4% of cable households still watch analogue TV, corresponding with 1.8 million households. Unitymedia was the first German cable operator to complete analogue switch-off this year. By the end of 2018, analogue TV channels are to be removed from most cable networks.
Interesting: Among viewers between 14 and 29 years of age, VOD has overtaken classic television. 45% of their TV/video usage is VOD, only 38% TV. In this age group, 71.3% use VOD services. Among the whole population, the share amounts to 35.7%.