Freeview sales mainly for second TVs, research shows

Chris Tryhorn

Wednesday October 4, 2006

MediaGuardian.co.uk

Almost all Freeview sales are for households' secondary television sets, according to research published today by media watchdog Ofcom.

It is not the digital terrestrial service but satellite and cable that are chiefly responsible for getting analogue households to go digital for the first time.

There were 1.2m sales of Freeview devices - boxes or TV sets - between April and June, but an increase in Freeview-only households of just 15,000.

This discrepancy suggests that most Freeview boxes are bought by homes that already have the digital terrestrial TV service or a pay-TV service such as Sky or cable.

Ofcom said the number of digital secondary television sets - typically in spare rooms or children's bedrooms - had more than doubled in the year to June, from just under 3.5m to more than 7m. Of these, more than 5m were equipped with Freeview.

"The large majority of digital television receivers are now being bought for use on additional television sets within the home to complement digital viewing on the household's primary television," Ofcom said in its latest quarterly report on digital TV.

On the positive side, this means that more households are going fully digital before the region-by-region analogue switch-off begins in 2008.

More than 40% of the UK's television sets are either connected to a digital set-top-box or have an integrated digital tuner, Ofcom said.

However, with fewer analogue households adopting Freeview, the government has plenty of work to do to push the switchover process forward.

Nearly 30% of households are still without digital TV, even though switchover is scheduled to be completed in 2012.

The report shows that, by the end of June, 70.2% of UK households were watching digital television on at least one set in the home, up from 69.7% at the end of March this year.

The 168,000 net additions to the number of digital households was driven not by Freeview but by satellite and cable.

Nearly two-thirds of these newly digital households were either paying Sky subscribers or viewers of Freesat from Sky, which gives free access to satellite TV for a one-off installation charge.

Cable represented another 50,000 new digital subscribers, most upgrading from analogue cable.
Ofcom said changes in sales patterns had caused it to adopt a new method for this quarter's report.

The effect has been to downgrade the historic figures: for instance, digital TV penetration at the end of March was previously calculated as 72.5% of the UK total, whereas the revised figure is 69.7%.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,1887376,00.html

My Oppinion:

This so very true. In my household, we are connected to Sky, however on the other television sets the standard analogue signal is recievied through and external ariel. I think the reason being for Freeview only used on secondary and tertiary television sets in households, is becuse there is no connection fee, no monthly fee, just a one off payment, whereby you recieve the five channels recieved through the analogue signal, however in digital quality with the addition of extra channels depending on the package chosen. I disagree with the idea of switching the analogue signal off completely as some people won't be ablt to afford freeview and that it would be pointless to get freeview for small televisions.