Dave Horvath
23 Aug 2006 6:42
A recent study performed by Datamonitor shows that close to 95% of UK households will have digital TV by 2010, as compared to 50% in the US and 66% in Germany. The company also says that Freeview will overtake satellite transmissions by 2008.
Even though recent interest has been piqued in the UK for HDTV by the broadcast of the World Cup, its predicted that UK households will continue to be behind the cuff on adopting HDTV as their standard. Its noted that most people in the UK don't see enough improvement in the standard to warrant the purchase.
Broadcasting regulator Ofcom shows that the UK is already the leader in digital TV viewing by as much as 70%, with the US being only 55% and no other European countries passing the 50% total digital population mark. Future growth is expected to be spurred by the hi-tech field producing more and more personal video recorders and TV on demand services.
Much like other places in the world, the UK will be forced to make the switch whether they like it or not once the government turns off the analog broadcasting. The town of Whitehaven is the first scheduled to be cut over in 2007, with others to be completed by 2012.
Source:
BBC