Netgem TV has launched a palm-sized ‘puck’ device it calls PLEIO that is compatible with Freely, the television platform provided by everyone TV in the United Kingdom. It comes with a remote control and gamepad and costs £99 with a three-month free subscription to games and additional channels, which is an optional £9.99 a month after that, although it may also be bundled by internet service providers.

Apparently PLEIO is to be pronounced “PLAY-oh”, although if you need to point that out it could spell a problem for the name.

It is the first Freely device that is not a television, so it will enable people to convert existing screens. Unlike Freely televisions, it does not include a traditional aerial input or tuner, so it only works over the internet with the channels. It uses Wi-Fi 6, with no support for a wired connection.

The Freely online offering claims to cover 97% of the most watched shows in the United Kingdom.

The £99 price point is significant, given that you can get a 32” Freely television for that. Or for £20 you can get an Amazon Fire TV stick.

PLEIO may be worth it for those that are happy with their existing television or want to use it in a room without an antenna connection. You can also take it with you to use anywhere in the United Kingdom with a fast Wi-Fi connection.

The Freely operator app sits alongside other apps, including Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, and thousands of other apps on the Google Play store. It runs on Android TV 14.

The puck device is tiny, just 64mm in diameter and 14mm deep, weighing just 40 grammes, which is about the weight of a couple of AA batteries. It has HDMI 2.1 and USB 2.0 ports and comes with a mains power supply.

There is support for 4K video, although no Freely services are available at that resolution, together with HDR10, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD, and 5.1 Surround Sound.

The remote control is Bluetooth 5.0, with infra-red for controlling the television, and comes with voice remote features.

It comes with a Bluetooth gamepad as standard, which may or may not be of interest to some. It serves as a point of differentiation, and justification for the price point and optional subscription model. It also helps explain the name.

The company says that its target market is the half of the country that do not have a gaming console. Those that do would probably not be satisfied by it. The question is whether those that do not have a console will want to play games.

The product is available on Amazon, where it currently has one three-star review that questions the price relative to Amazon and Roku products.

Bundling deals have been announced with some alternative network providers, including BRSK, now part of Netomnia.

What it is not is an inexpensive mass-market device that will enable anyone to simply ‘upgrade’ their television to the Freely platform. The PLEIO puck is not currently available separately. That may be yet to come, from Netgem or someone else.

Netgem says that unlike other products and sticks on the market, PLEIO is a full TV solution and a set top box in the palm of your hand. “It’s not a sidekick HDMI product; it’s the main event.”

“We built PLEIO as the answer to the fragmentation of the entertainment market,” said Sylvain Thevenot, the managing director of Netgem UK. “PLEIO delivers a truly comprehensive viewing experience — Watch, Stream, and Play — that is ready for any fibre broadband-connected home today.”

www.netgem.co.uk
www.freely.co.uk

The BBC risks compliant television licence fee payers questioning the fairness of the system if collection and enforcement is not modernised. The Public Accounts Committee, which examines the value for money of government projects, warns that while the BBC is a trusted institution, its relevance across the United Kingdom is under pressure. It suggests that the increasing number of homes not paying for a television licence represented a potential loss of £1.1 billion in revenue over the last year.

Last year, the BBC collected £3.8 billion of licence fee income, and 23.8 million television licences were in force.

3.6 million households in the United Kingdom declared that they did not need a television licence, which costs £169.50 a year and is legally required to view any live television or video service. That represents a potential loss of £617 million in revenue. A further £550 million was lost to people simply not paying for a licence.

There were nearly 2 million enforcement visits to unlicensed households in the last year, but the BBC said it had become harder to get people to answer their doors, which limits the enforcement effectiveness.

In its report, the committee says the BBC should modernise licence fee collection and enforcement, saying that it has not adopted opportunities to digitise the licence and still relies on postal correspondence, with 40% of households still receiving a paper licence.

When asked by the committee why it did not limit use of the online BBC iPlayer to licence holders, the BBC said that its household-address based licensing system does not match individual based BBC account data. It said it chooses not to limit access in order to preserve universality.

The report is also critical of lack of transparency on returns from its commercial activities, noting that the BBC failed to report in its last annual accounts progress against a commercial returns target of £1.5 billion for the year.

The committee drew on evidence provided by Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, provided before his recent resignation.

The current Royal Charter under which the BBC operates runs until the end of 2027 and dues for review.

In a time of intense competition for attention, younger audiences are choosing other media providers, putting the BBC mission to ‘serve all audiences’ under pressure, the committee says in its report.

Only a little over half of younger people feel the BBC reflects them.

When questioned on the timeline for a switchover from broadcast to online, the BBC told the committee that without universal affordable broadband, a switchover would be “a self-inflicted wound” and reiterated the BBC’s commitment to maintaining significant broadcast services during the transition.

The Public Accounts Committee is seeking an explanation from the BBC of how it will ensure access with all audiences across all platforms, in line with its role as a universal public service.

Conservative MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the cross-party committee, said: “The BBC is an organisation under severe pressure. Its own founding aspiration to be a truly universal broadcaster reflecting all its viewers means that this pressure, from both within and without, is inherent in its mission.

“Our report offers a snapshot of the BBC’s efforts to deliver value for money as it seeks to thrive in an increasingly fragmented media landscape, and illustrates the tensions it must navigate in multiple areas of its business — in efficiently collecting the licence fee; in providing that universal service; in staying relevant to its audiences.

“On the licence fee, our report makes clear that the ground is shifting beneath the BBC’s feet — the traditional enforcement method of household visits is seeing fewer and fewer returns at a time of heightened competition for almost every aspect of the BBC’s activities.”

It says that “without a modernised approach focused more on online viewing, the broadcaster will see faith in the licence fee system ebb away.”

The BBC said: “As was made clear in the committee session, the licence fee needs reform. We are actively exploring all options that can make our funding model fairer, more modern, and more sustainable, but we’ve been clear that any reform must safeguard the BBC as a universal public broadcaster.”

The report, BBC Accounts and Trust Statement 2024-25 is published by the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts and is available from the Parliament web site.

www.bbc.co.uk
committees.parliament.uk

Broadcast channels continued to gain viewing in the United States in October, but so did online services. NFL viewing drove a rise in both as viewing increased seasonally. Online video services accounted for 45.7% of all television viewing, led by YouTube with 12.9%.

Broadcast channels saw a 4.3% monthly viewing gain in October, increasing their share slightly to 22.9% of all television viewing, the largest share for almost a year, as reported by Nielsen.

Sport accounted for nearly a third of all viewing of broadcast channels. NFL games on CBS, FOX and NBC claimed the top three overall program rankings with over 20 million viewers each. On Sundays, broadcast channels claimed a 27.3% share of all television viewing.

The new television season continued to see viewing of broadcast drama up too.

Viewing of subscription channels, which Nielsen calls cable, was down to a low of 22.2%, from 26.3% a year ago, when it benefited from election coverage. News accounts for a quarter of all cable viewing.

However, The Gauge, which shows the share of all television viewing, reveals that viewing of online video services was up 2.4% month on month, outpacing the 1.3% increase in overall television usage, again driven by American football viewing across key online services.

Peacock, the online service from NBCUniversal, saw a 19% rise in viewing, representing 1.6% of all television viewing.

Amazon Prime Video, the home of NFL Thursday Night Football, with 3.8% of all television viewing, rose to 6.4% on Thursdays.

Netflix dropped to 8.0% of all television viewing, the third consecutive monthly decline, drown from 8.8% in July.

YouTube accounted for 12.9% of all television viewing in the United States in October, compared to 10.6% a year before, but down from its high of 13.4% in July.

Online video services represented 45.7% of all television viewing in the United States in October. That is down on the 47.3% high in July, but still more than broadcast and subscription television channels combined.

www.nielsen.com