Ofcom, TV regulators and stuff, have published a report saying that nearly three out of four
UK households now view digital television on their main set. Obviously, this doesn’t include houses with no TV but that’s blindingly obvious isn’t it?

Around
600,000 kicked analogue TV out of the back door and pressed red to watch digital terrestrial television
(DTT) for the first time, with almost eight million second sets now
connected to receive a digital reception, an increase of four million
in the same period last year. 9.3 million UK households now have DTT on at least one set in the home, up from 6.8 million in September last year.

Sales
of DTT equipment during the quarter approached 1.4 million, a split of
835,000 set-top-boxes and 556,000 digital televisions (those are the ones that have digital built in).  Digital
satellite remains the most popular digital television platform on
primary sets in UK households, with 33.9% of homes either subscribing
to Sky or receiving free-to-view satellite services. During the third quarter the total number of
satellite subscriptions increased by 68,000, 20,000 higher than the
same period in 2005.

Cable providers gained 22,000 additional
customers over the three months to September 2006. This was the highest
number of quarterly cable additions for over two years. This of course has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it is incredibly easy to get dodgy cable. The
cable networks continue to upgrade from analogue to digital and as of
September, 88% of all cable TV households were digital, up
from 80% this time last year. There are now over 3.3 million cable
television households, 13.1% of all television households.

It’s likely that Film4 and E4 have been largely responsible for the growth in this area… and of course, the news that the analogue signal is to be switched off won’t do sales any harm. [Mof Gimmers]