Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) is becoming a preferred choice for Western Europe, following the forced replacements of Analog TVs. More than 44 percent of households there will have DTT by 2012, stated an ABI Research (News - Alert) report. Most DTT services are free-to-air (FTA) services, with no subscription and minimal hardware requirements: in the UK, for example, DTT set-top boxes are available for just under $20.

 

ABI Research is a market research firm focused on the impact of emerging technologies on global consumer and business markets and with a blend of market intelligence, primary research, and expert assessment from its worldwide team of industry analysts, ABI Research assists clients with their strategic growth initiatives.

 

Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV or DTT) is an implementation of digital technology to provide a greater number of channels and/or better quality of picture and sound using aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna (or aerial) instead of a satellite dish or cable connection. The technology used is ATSC in North America, ISDB-T in Japan, DVB-T in Europe and Australia, and DMB-T/H in China (including Hong Kong); the rest of the world remaining mostly undecided. ISDB-T is very similar to DVB-T and can share front-end receiver and demodulator components.

 

“Some pay-DTT providers are positioning their service as a kind of ‘halfway house’ between free-to-air services and other forms of pay TV”, says senior analyst Cesar Bachelet. “They offer all the regular FTA programs, plus some premium content at an attractive price. One of the most interesting markets, Italy, is expected to show the strongest growth in DTT over the next five years, and pay-DTT is a leading component of that growth. It’s attractive for several reasons, including plenty of sports programming, but the main driver is the prevalence of ‘pay-as-you-go’ (PAYG) services that don’t require a commitment to lengthy subscriptions.”

 

“The pay-as-you-go model has a strong history in Italy in broadband and mobile telephone services, so the transition to pay-DTT is an easy one,” notes Bachelet. “ABI Research believes PAYG DTT will prove popular in other European markets as well.”

 

However, the impact of DTT will vary from region to region depending on the availability of digital alternative and the dependence of analog TV, adds the ABI report. In Belgium, for example, where most of the population gets its TV via cable, the migration to digital TV will primarily occur within the cable environment. So DTT is unlikely to gain much traction.

 

The report also states that the Pay-DTT in particular is carving out a slot in competition with other pay-TV offerings from cable and telco-based service providers in some markets.

 

The new research brief, “European DTT Services Snapshot,” (http://www.abiresearch.com/products/research_brief/Multi-Channel_ Video_Research_Brief/114) provides an overview of the European DTT market, focusing on drivers, analog switch-off plans, business models and key players. It includes forecast figures to 2012 for shipments of TV-centric DTT receivers and households using DTT.

 

For more information please visit http://www.abiresearch.com/