More than half of Germany's households now have digital TV

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

The German media regulatory authorities (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Landesmedienanstalten – ALM) have, for the fifth year in succession, presented facts and figures on the status of TV digitisation in Germany. The results are contained in the 2009 digitisation report from the ALM’s Regulatory Affairs Commission (ZAK) [Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht der Landesmedienanstalten].

By mid-2009, more than half of German TV households (55 per cent) had at least one digital mode of reception at their disposal. Compared to 2008, the rate of digitisation rose by 8.3 percentage points, slightly more than in previous years. During the last year, some 3.2 million households in German opted for a digital receiver.

                                     Households
                                     (millions)    %age
                                 --------------  ------
Digital reception only           17.332 million   46.4% 
Digital and analogue reception    3.231 million    8.6%
  Digital                        20.563 million   55.0%
Analogue reception only          16.850 million   45.0% 
  Total                          37.412 million  100.0%

Source: TNS Infratest MediaResearch

Traditionally, consumers go for external set-top boxes, and according to market researchers, gfu/GfK, some 1.04 million sets left the shops during the first quarter. Sales figures for flat-screen sets reached more than double that figure, with 2.15 million flat-screen TV sets being sold during the first quarter of 2009. As a rule, these are integrated sets (IDTV) featuring an integrated decoder, usually a DTT tuner. Sales figures for IDTV sets with DVB-C tuners or DVB-S tuners are still comparatively low. However, it is to be expected that this will rapidly change once the issue of the open interface (common interface plus; CI Plus; CI+) has been resolved and platform providers release the respective modules.

%age of TV Households by transmission method:

                          2005    2006    2007    2008    2009
                        ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
Cable                     51.7    51.8    53.7    52.5    52.8
  Analogue                46.7    44.6    45.0    41.5    36.6
  Digital                  5.0     7.2     8.7    11.0    16.2
Satellite                 43.1    42.0    42.6    42.0    42.1
  Analogue                26.4    22.5    18.2    14.4    10.9
  Digital                 16.7    19.5    24.4    27.6    31.2
Terrestrial                9.7     9.2    11.5    11.1    11.3
  Analogue                 5.3     3.9     1.6     0.6     0.0
  Digital                  4.4     5.3     9.9    10.5    11.3

Digital conversion status (%) by transmission method:

                          2005    2006    2007    2008    2009
                        ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
Cable                      9.7    15.2    16.2    21.0    30.6
Satellite                 38.8    47.2    57.3    65.7    74.1 
Terrestrial               45.6    57.1    86.0    95.1   100.0

TV Households:

                          2005    2006    2007    2008    2009
                        ------  ------  ------  ------  ------
TV H'holds (millions)   33.904  33.904  36.981  37.277  37.412

Source: ZAK Digitalisierungsbericht 2009

More: 2009 Digitisation Report