Many UK homes risk losing TV signals

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UK television regulator Ofcom has admitted that almost 250,000 UK homes will lose any sort of terrestrial signal when analogue TV is switched off. Many experts think the numbers might be much higher.
Ofcom added that about 75,000 homes (0.3% of UK homes) will not receive a useable digital-terrestrial signal, although they almost certainly are in a similar situation today and not currently receiving analogue TV given their remoteness.

Ofcom’s own data suggests that there are certain areas where either “poor or no coverage” of digital-terrestrial TV following switch-over. Some of these properties will be able to receive satellite-delivered signals, but possibly not all. Ofcom states that 350,000 homes (or about 1.4% of the UK’s existing TV households) will be outside the coverage area of Freeview, the UK’s digital terrestrial system. Most of these homes (about 275,000) will get a DTT signal some of the time, which Ofcom translates as having to suffer disrupted signals on about 50 evenings a year. The worst affected areas are in Scotland, in and around Ayrshire.

The numbers emerged within Ofcom’s Q4/2007 digital progress report, which generally painted a very positive picture as far as Britain’s analogue switch off was concerned. The bottom line in terms of those homes now able to receive some sort of digital transmission (terrestrially, or via satellite or cable) now tops 86.7% (on the home’s primary TV set), a rise of 1.5 percentage points on the previous quarter. When analogue cable multichannel distribution is added into the mix the overall numbers of multichannel homes rises to 87.6%. The last three months of last year saw 524,500 net conversions to digital TV (via one or other transmission method), up from the autumn’s quarter of 367,700. In total 4m DTT set-top boxes or digitally-equipped TV sets were sold. Many of the set-top converters are now being installed onto second and subsequent TVs.

Ofcom adds that “just over” 1m homes (1,055,000) are now using free-to-view digital satellite services, and this number will be boosted with the launch in May/June of Freesat, the joint BBC/ITV satellite service. There are more than 8.3m satellite pay-TV homes.

Cable take-up is flat, with 13.6% of UK homes connected to cable TV, compared to 13.5% back in 1999, and this despite cable just having experienced its best quarter year for some years adding 61,000 net new subs.

Readers wanting a detailed examination of Ofcom’s figure can see the document at:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/dtv/dtv_2007_q4/dtvq407.pdf


source: Rapid TV News

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