Playback sales surge as Freeview turns five

摘要

The number of Freeview Playback personal video recorders in UK homes is expected to double over the last three months of the year as the product moves towards becoming a mass-market proposition. Freeview, the UK's digital-terrestrial television platform that on October 30 celebrated the fifth anniversary of its launch, launched Freeview Playback in December 2006 after numerous delays (NMM September 29, 2006), but a marketing campaign did not take place until the summer. Freeview general manager Use Howling said this week that Freeview Playback was now a "mass-market" product and "was only going to become bigger". It could be debated whether the 170,000 decoders sold by the end of September, representing just 1.3 per cent of the 13 million homes with Freeview installed, represent a mass market. Howling expects the total to reach 335,000 by Christmas and said that Freeview was "slightly ahead of where we thought we'd be". By way of comparison, the Sky Plus PVR notched up 38,000 users in its first year since launching in September 2001, albeit with very little promotion.