Freeview CEO Jonathan Thompson says Freeview Play is ‘levelling the playing field’ for viewers by broadening the availability of catch-up TV.
Writing in Freeview’s annual update on UK DTT, Thompson says the presence of catch-up services has broadened the genre’s appeal. “Catch-up players from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and others now come as standard across a wide range of TVs and set-top boxes, rather than being confined to a single manufacturer or to pay TV platforms.”
Freeview Play is now available across 20 different manufacturers including Panasonic, LG, Humax, Hisense, JVC, Hitachi and Toshiba and now represents 1.5 million sales. The specifications have been updated to include 4K and High Dynamic Range (HDR).
In all 110 million Freeview sales have been made to date. DTT remains the most popular UK television platform and is in 19.3 million households, compared to 10.8 million satellite homes and 4.1 million cable.
Thompson argues Freeview is meeting a growing demand from viewers that want a strong free-to-air line up alongside over-the-top (OTT) services including Netflix and Amazon.
