USDTV Hits 10K Subscriber Mark

After launching its OTA DTV service in March, USDTV has announced it has surpassed the 10,000 subscriber milestone.

Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Las Vegas were the first cities to receive the cable alternative and USDTV expects more rollouts this year. The service, the first of its kind in the U.S., offers a pay over the air DTV service by pooling digital spectrum from participating broadcasters.

More than half of its customers are those that subscriber neither to cable or satellite, but continue to use regular VHF/UHF antennas for their television service, according to USDTV.

In Q4 '04 USDTV will launch a new version of the set-top box featuring Zenith fifth-generation 8VSB reception technology from LG Electronics and MPEG-4 compression, which will allow the company to introduce VOD and DVR services.

Wal-Mart is selling a USDTV "off-air-only" HDTV receiver under the brand name USDigital; they are USDTV-ready and receive all digital and HDTV channels broadcast by local TV stations.