Television Sets and Smart TV

The Italian stock of televisions in the residential sector is estimated at a total of 42.3 million units (as of 2018). The distribution of television sets in the Italian households is 88.9% digital terrestrial, up to 89.1% including the antenna-less devices (as of March 2019)[1]. It is estimated that the average life of a TV set is about 10 years, although it is widely variable. The average lifetime of the televisions has been however greatly reduced by the rapid evolution of technologies and functions implemented in new models. It should also be noted that in the period 2009-2013, almost the entire stock of televisions was replaced due to the shift from analogue to digital terrestrial transmission. On average in the period 2015-16, almost 4,054,000 televisions were purchased, at an average purchase price of 366 euros. The average replacement rate for the stock was 9.29% of existing appliances, but the purchase rate per household was 16.1%. Market dynamics declined slightly in 2014 and even more in 2015, with a new increase in 2016-2017. Since the first of January 2017, DVB-T1 decoder and HEVC (H.265) decoder TVs were not marketable: thus, the 2016 market might have been negatively affected by this regulatory intervention although no particular information has been given. The televisions sold since 1 January 2017 must be compatible with the new DVB-T2 standard[2]and with HEVC encoding. Finally, since 2020, broadcasts begin with the new generation of digital terrestrial DVB-T2 that will be mandatory by June 2022. In addition, the functionality and connectivity of the television sets are quickly growing: smart TVs and external devices that allow a TV screen to be connected to internet are about 6,500,000, with a 20.6% increase compared to 2017[3]. The way content TV sets are being used is also changing: nowadays, aound 5,700,000 Italians (9.7% of the population) watch live or on-demand television programmes on devices other than television [3], and this figure is quickly increasing involving especially young people.