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Freesat feeds on Sky and Virgin with recession-fuelled surge to 1.7m homes

Free satellite TV service Freesat will hit its fifth birthday with more than 1.7m UK homes after a surge in take-up as Britain squirms around the edge of a triple-dip recession.

Around 150,000 homes have added Freesat as their main TV choice since April 2012, and the service claims more than half switched from pay-TV.

More than 80,000 of these arrived in the second half of the year, with a pre-Christmas surge following the launch of the broadband-enabled Free Time from Freesat box.

Freesat feeds on Sky and Virgin with recession-fuelled surge to 1.7m homes
Freesat holds a solid fourth place in the UK’s TV leaderboard

Read Recombu Digital’s guides to Freesat and Free Time from FreesatEmma Scott, Freesat’s managing director said: “Freesat is truly a TV platform of choice. Our consistently positive results demonstrate fantastic growth and a strong appetite for high quality, good value TV, in a challenging economic environment. 

“The success of our Free Time service with its cutting edge TV Guide and on-demand services including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and YouTube, gives yet more sensible reasons to switch to Freesat.”

Freesat claims that more around a quarter of British homes are thinking about a change of TV provider this year, and 60 per cent of these are trying to save money by switching.

Freesat has sold more than 3.2 million TVs and boxes since it launched in 2008, and more than 600,000 of those have been since it launched Free Time from Freesat last autumn.

Follow Recombu Digital’s UK TV League TableThe hybrid Humax HDR-1000S box combines a Freesat+HD recorder with a broadband connection that brings catch-up TV from the BBC iPlayer and ITV Player, as well as YouTube videos.

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