Nielsen: 98.9% of U.S. Homes Can Get DTV Signal

Little more than 1 million homes are still without set, converter box, cable or satellite

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/30/2009 12:51:33 PM

Nielsen says that 98.9% of U.S. homes are able to receive a digital TV signal.

That is up 229,000 homes and 1.3 million since the June 12 switch-over to digital broadcasting.

That leaves 1.1% or a little over a million homes still without a DTV set or DTV-to analog converter box or cable or satellite service.

Nielsen has even begun expressing it as that "glass-mostly-full" readiness figure. In previous announcements, it had led with the percentage of unready, rather than ready, homes.

At last look, converter boxes were still being applied for at about 35,000 a day, though on average only a little over half were actually being redeemed, so that unreadiness number continues to drop.

Among the takeaways from Nielsen's latest figures is that income remains a factor in DTV uptake. More than half (54%) of the still-unready homes make less than $25,000 a year.

And while broadband is becoming a growing destination for video, most of the DTV unready homes don't have that as an alternative. That's because 60.7% of those homes don't have Internet access, according to the ratings company.