Eastern European DTV Homes to Hit 121 Million by 2018

LONDON: The number of digital TV homes in Eastern Europe will almost double between 2012 and 2018, reaching 121 million, according to a new report from Digital TV Research.

Digital TV Eastern Europe notes that this year alone, 13 million digital TV homes will be added, with penetration rising to 61.4 percent by the end of the year, up from just 20 percent at the end of 2008. By 2018, digital TV penetration should reach 97.3 percent. Free-to-air DTT will account for 41.82 million homes, followed by 32.5 million for pay DTH and 23.78 million for digital cable TV.

“Much of the emphasis has fallen on the remaining 21.7 million analogue cable subscribers," said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, of the 2012 figures. "Many of these homes will upgrade to digital cable, but some will shift to IPTV and DTH. However, many of the remaining analogue cable subscribers are refuseniks, who don’t want to pay more for TV services. Free-to-air DTT (or even pay DTT) is an attractive option for these homes.”

He added, “Slow implementation of analogue terrestrial switchover favored the pay-TV operators as it gave them more time to convert homes to their packages before free-to-air DTT became established. Poland and Romania are prime examples of this. However, we expect the impact of DTT in these two countries to result in (small) declines in their pay-TV subscriber counts.”

Overall pay-TV revenues in the region are set to rise by 31 percent from 2012 to 2018 to reach $7.5 billion, with the number of subscribers rising by 21 percent.