Freeview Has Digital Recording Taped

Freeview has announced plans to launch a digital recorder brand, Freeview Playback, by September this year, due to growing concerns that consumer awareness of digital recording technology is scant.

The new Freeview Playback products should be available in December, just in time to be slipped inside Christmas stockings.

Although the clock is ticking in the countdown to digital, with the switchover from analogue due to begin in 2008, luddite viewers are still not ditching their old-style VHS tapes. Freeview hopes to show that recording those all-important episodes of Lost or Desperate Housewives straight to hard disk will give viewers advantages including increased storage space and integrated programme guides.

To help confused consumers understand the tape-free technology, Freeview is asking manufacturers to use consistent terms for the new products (now variously called digital TV recorders, personal video recorders and digital video recorders).

Freeview also wants to establish an industry standard to give buyers sceptical of the new technology the comfort that Freeview Playback products are quality-assured. On top of this, a marketing campaign is planned to increase the awareness of digital recording in general and Freeview Playback products in particular.

According to Cary Wakefield, Freeview general manager, “Freeview’s success to date has been based upon offering viewers a simple way to get digital television. Working with the industry, Freeview is committed to delivering a strong brand to increase consumer awareness of the benefits of digital TV recorders and to make the technology easy to understand.”

Freeserve: 0845 070 0066www.freeserve.co.uk