Freeview rebrands digital video recorder as Freeview+

by Staff, Brand Republic 03-Jul-08, 12:25

LONDON - Freeview, the free UK digital TV service, has named its digital TV recording service Freeview+, opting for an identical naming strategy to the same service offered by its rivals Sky and Virgin Media.

Sky's personal video recorder is called Sky+ while Virgin uses V+. BT Vision is the only exception, branding its technology V-Box.

Rob Farmer, marketing director of Freeview, said that the name was designed to capitalise on the trend among PVRs to use the term "plus".

He said: "There's over one third of a million Freeview digital recorders in households -- and that's been achieved with relatively little marketing support. We are now upping our efforts and since '+' has entered the vernacular in recent years, we think it makes sense to reposition ourselves to take advantage of that."

Freeview+, which offers similar recording and live TV pausing facilities as its rivals, will be rolled out across retail stores and packaging coinciding with a marketing drive ahead of the digital switchover in 2012. Last week, Freeview appointed ad agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay with a £5m brief to raise awareness and sales of the Freeview+ units in the run-up to Christmas.

Freeview is currently in more than 15m homes in the UK. It is owned and marketed by DTV Services, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, BskyB and National Grid Wireless.

According to marketing research company GFK, the UK digital television recording market is growing by 76% year on year.

Comments

James Stewart - 03/07/2008

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/829192/Freeview-changes-brand-Freeview+/ http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/829274/Playback-service-rebranded-Freeview+/ http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/829182/Freeview-rebrands-digital-video-recorder-Freeview+/ All 3 on the news page?!

Charles Sludden - 04/07/2008

All these PVR's came about by the introduction of TiVo back in 1999 - 2000 and in partnership with Sky How do I know? because we launched TiVo and progressed its transformation into Sky+ by operating roadshows nationally on limited budgets on a partnership between TiVo , Sky and Thomson Televisions My point is that the offering of such huge variety inevitably means the viewer has more choices and freedom of lifestyle but surely the viewer / consumer is confused by all the joint ventures out their or do they just not care as long as they get a TV signal and a set price for a set top box and no need of subscriptions. Maybe those who offer subscriptions will fall maybe not but the market is definitely volatile and with 76% year on year growth where will it all end