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Reported in various sites. Broadcast says:
Quote:Freeview has now passed the 100 million mark for the number of digital terrestrial television TVs and boxes sold since its launch in 2002. The figure includes all televisions, set-top boxes and DVD and Blu-ray devices with an inbuilt Freeview DVB-T SD or HD tuner.Integrated digital televisions (IDTVs) make up the majority (66%) of Freeview units sold, at just over 70 million. Freeview+ digital TV recorders account for over six million sales.
HD televisions and boxes account for 16 million sales and have seen year-on-year growth since Freeview HD was launched in 2010. Of these, 98% of sales were TVs.
What none of the reports seems to mention is that there seems to be no particular reason to expect this growth rate to continue. DSO is done and dusted. HD may be keeping set sales active so far but may not be a strong enough incentive, for a lot of people, to justify an early expensive upgrade. Freeview Play even less so, as it is coming late to the streaming party and (apparently) offering only PSB catchup. And 4K is fine except there’s very little to actually watch and it does pose a problem for catchup.
My guess – we may have reached peak Freeview. Or nearly.
Interesting article the other day (in the Telegraph as I recall) about the death of live TV watching. Essentially it claimed that hardly anyone under 25 watches live TV. I’m well past that age and I reckon I watch live about two hours a week if that. The rest is catch-up or streaming box sets. I reckon we have reached peak on live TV of any flavour.
Quite a number of the people I know rarely watch live TV and some are that old I’m not sure if they too are a-live.
The only TV I watch live is live sport and news bulletins. Everything else is recorded and either chase-played (often to catch up to live by skipping over the ad breaks by the end) or watched later.
I am old enough to be careful not to use up too much of my remaining viewing time on repeats any more.
I would think the significant distinction (when it comes to Freeview’s future) is not live TV vs recorded, or even live TV vs catchup, but linear channels vs OTT.
Which is much the same as free vs pay. And IMO calls into question the wisdom of the decision by the PBS content owners to divert funding from YouView to Freeview Play.
JamesB – 1 day ago »
HD may be keeping set sales active so far but may not be a strong enough incentive, for a lot of people, to justify an early expensive upgrade. Freeview Play even less so, as it is coming late to the streaming party and (apparently) offering only PSB catchup.
The Freeview Play specification (http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/87685/16-3-15_Freeview_Play_Technical_Summary_v4.pdf) makes it clear that pay services are also envisaged (eventually). Whether this means NetFlix, YouTube, NowTV etc, or merely Arqiva’s dire Connect channels, time will no doubt tell.
Interesting document.
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