Four TV partners join Freeview Play platform

Blaupunkt, Hisense, Sharp and Toshiba adopt the subscription-free catch-up and on-demand service

LONDON — Freeview UK has today announced that Freeview Play, the subscription-free catch-up and on-demand TV service will launch on Blaupunkt, Hisense, Sharp AQUOS, and Toshiba devices in the coming months. Since its debut in October 2015, around 20 leading brands including Panasonic, Humax, LG and JVC have launched Freeview Play TVs and set-top boxes. The announcement today confirms that Freeview Play is now the most widely adopted service for catch-up TV in the UK.

Freeview Play brings an enhanced EPG to TVs and set-top boxes, allowing viewers to access catch-up programming from BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Demand 5 and UKTV Play by scrolling back through the TV guide. Additional on-demand content is also available from the Freeview Play apps page on compatible devices.

Freeview Play compatible Blaupunkt, Hisense, Sharp AQUOS, and Toshiba TVs will be available in 2017.

Freeview and Digital UK, the company which developed the technical specification for Freeview Play, today set out their plans for future development of the service at an industry event in London.

Speaking at ‘Towards a connected TV nation’, Guy North, Managing Director of Freeview said, “I’m delighted to welcome Blaupunkt, Hisense, Sharp and Toshiba to the Freeview Play platform. With these new manufacturers on board, Freeview Play has become the most-widely adopted catch-up TV platform in the UK, which is no mean feat in just over a year.

“Freeview Play now has the content, functionality and distribution to really deliver scale in the TV market, meaning we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of making connected viewing accessible and affordable for everyone.”

Jonathan Thompson, CEO of Digital UK, said: “Our ambition is to take Freeview from ‘what comes with your telly’ into an active choice for a broad range of viewers. The market for Freeview Play is very big. From the core Freeview constituency of 10 million homes, to those currently paying a monthly subscription who are looking for a better deal.”

There are now over 200 different models of Freeview Play devices on sale and programme choice has been bolstered this year with the addition of UKTV Play and STV Player. The service now offers more than 6,000 hours of content to viewers for no monthly cost. Pay-light OTT services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are also available on most Freeview Play devices.

The recently announced 2017 Freeview Play specification will bring a raft of new features including search and recommendations to many new Freeview Play products next year.

Howard Grindrod, Deputy Managing Director of Hisense UK Ltd, said: “Having the Freeview Play platform on our TVs is a significant step forward in the development of our UK business. Hisense is a world brand and we consider Freeview Play a major hygiene factor in the UK market, providing our customers with exceptional functionality that compliments perfectly our product design and specification.”