Only 73% of homes are able to watch digital TV broadcasts

Most analogue broadcasts end in less than three weeks

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With analogue television broadcasting coming to an end at the beginning of next month, only 73 per cent of households with television sets had acquired a digital receiver or digital decoder by the end of July. Nearly all who lacked a digital device said that they planned to get one soon.
      In households using antennas, 85 per cent had gone digital. In homes with cable television, the figure was 61 per cent. Nearly 200,000 digital devices were sold in July.
      Tauno Äijälä, head of the TV 2007 project group, said at a digital broadcasting event at the Turku Fair on Monday that the television sets of between 20,000 and 40,000 households will go dark on Saturday morning, September 9th at four a.m., when the analogue broadcast network is shut down. Some of them have not yet acquired a digital TV or decoder; some do not want to, and a small number are out of range of digital broadcasts.
     
The 1.2 million households with cable TV have been given a reprieve until late February.
      A total of 48 new supplementary broadcasting stations are being set up in 26 communities. The last of them will be operational by the end of the year. There are 38 main transmitters. In about 90 communities antennas will have to be turned in the direction of the new broadcast source.
      An estimated 500 households will be permanently out of range of the digital TV network. They will get their signal via satellite.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Centralised digital decoders to be allowed in apartment houses (3.4.2007)
  Centralised digital decoders to be allowed in cable TV apartment houses (4.4.2007)

Helsingin Sanomat