Monday Feburary 23, 2009 – Myra Moore
Over-the-air TV obituaries have been so ubiquitous in recent years, you might think the grave diggers are about to shovel the final earth that will bury the old-school terrestrial TV model.
Granted, it’s not the mighty TV delivery giant it used to be, but an examination of recent Digital TV receiver shipmentsillustrates why “the reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.” In 2008, more than 55 million digital terrestrial receivers (set-top boxes (STBs) and TVs) shipped in the United States, while almost the same number shipped into the European market.
Digital transitions are helping to propel Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) receiver salesabove those for Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), digital cable, and Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite reception. Naturally, the 2009 analog shut-off in the United States is a significant factor in those life-affirming sales. The U.S. and other ATSC standard countries, though, won’t carry the 17% CAGR that DTC projects for DTT receiver shipments through 2013. It will be the European-created Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T) standard that will do the heavy lifting. The chart below depicts the (current) three major digital terrestrial transmission standards and their projected shares in receiver sales.
Source: DTC
That’s a lot of OTA receivers sold in the next few years. If the new Chinese DTT standard is added to the mix (currently a small part of the overall market), 2010 DTT receiver shipment totals are estimated to be as high as 172 million.
DVB-T is the steady digital OTA work horse for a couple of reasons: 1) the standard has been widely adopted all over Europe and other parts of the world – namely India, which will fuel significant growth throughout the forecast period; and 2) there is still a lot of growth left for high-definition transmissions in DVB-T territories.
DTT started out as a way to get more channels into a single slice of spectrum; not for using most of the gained bandwidth for one channel of HD programming. Now, however, compression and transmission technology evolution, and smaller digital displays are helping to create demand for new high-definition receivers.
So, not dead yet.
