Freeview leads digital TV growth in UK

摘要

More than four million Freeview receivers were sold in the last quarter of 2007, according to figures published last week by communications regulator Ofcom. But the number of homes with Freeview as their sole digital-television service increased by only 243,000, to 9.58 million. The huge disparity between the figures can be explained by three factors. First, Freeview equipment is being used with secondary television sets in homes that already take the digital-terrestrial service. Second, cable and satellite television homes are taking Freeview as a secondary service. The third factor is that a substantial number of existing Freeview homes are upgrading their equipment, in particular buying integrated digital-television sets (idTVs) or digital video recorders (DVRs) to replace set-top boxes.