PlayTV ships 85,000 units in UK

Freeview and PVR device enjoys strong first week at retail

Sony has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that PlayTV has shipped 85,000 units to retailers in the UK.

The hardware add-on, which acts as a freeview box and personal video recorder, went on sale last weekend and retails for GBP 69.99.

Pre-orders for the peripheral were around 9000 according to Sony. Momentum is building in the run up to Christmas, with specialist and national press giving thumbs up to the device, which strengthens the PlayStation 3's status as a multimedia hub for the living room.

The hardware is being rolled-out across the rest of Europe until December, but there are currently no plans to release PlayTV in the US.

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Latest comments (4)

Rupert Loman Founder & CEO, Gamer Network13 years ago

I ditched my Freeview box and am very happy with PlayTV! A few bugs which hopefully will be ironed out, but all in all not bad. Wonder if they'll do an HD version when Freeview starts carrying an HD channel...

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Kenneth Young Freelance Composer & Sound Designer, AudBod13 years ago

FYI, Freeview does have HD! But you need a satelite - [link url=http://www.freesat.co.uk
]http://www.freesat.co.uk
[/link]

P.S. Sorry for breaking Eurogamer the other day :D

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Rupert Loman Founder & CEO, Gamer Network13 years ago

Yeah i'm aware of freesat... But they are apparently going to put an hd channel or two over freeview (ariel) too.

No worries - thanks for the record traffic figures!

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Kenneth Young Freelance Composer & Sound Designer, AudBod13 years ago

None of Sony's top of the range TVs released in the UK have had the HD freeview tuner built in to them sported by their American brethren. I don't think this is short sightedness or an evil ploy to make people spend more money, rather the pan-European spec for HD Freeview was only just finalised and submitted for review this summer.

PlayTV units sport hardware DVB-T MPEG2 tuners, whereas the HD freeview standard, DVB-T2, will be MPEG4. This isn't likely to be something that can be upgraded by software/firmware as it will require a new suite of chips dedicated to processing the new standard.

I wonder what size the PS3s stock hard drive will be when 'PlayTV HD' comes out? 320 GB? 1TB?! ;)

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