The Ten Pound DTT Receiver!

According to Broadband TV News, UK supermarket giant Tesco are now selling a DVB-T receiver for the retail price of £10 - at today's exchange rates that's just under EUR 15 or just over US$ 20 - surely now the cheapest DTT receiver in the world?

The receiver in question is made by Techwood.

First DVB-T adoption in Latin America...

I spotted on the newswires this morning that the Uruguayan president has signed a decree that adopts DVB-T and DVB-H for terrestrial DTV in that country. This is rather significant because Latin America, a potentially huge market for DTT, is still something of a virgin territory. The Brazilians have (rather bizarrely) thrown their lot in with the Japanese by deciding to implement a local variation of the ISDB-T system. None of the other countries, however, have yet made a decision on which DTT standard to use. The Americans have been pushing ATSC in the region of course, but it's a system that's seen as being not as technologically advanced as either DVB-T or ISDB-T....

It'll be interesting to see whether this decision in Uruguay pushes the issue up the agenda in Argentina and Chile, which will probably be the next countries to make decisions. Should one or other of those opt also for DVB-T, it's fair to say that the system could spread to the rest of Latin America. Which will mean more good news for receiver prices.

PlayTV on the Sony PSP

Further to an earlier post, this video from GC07 courtesy of the people at Gizmodo, gives us a walkthrough of a very nice thing called PlayTV from Sony. Basically, it turns your Playstation into a fully functional DVB-T receiver and PVR, with full EPG support... But wait, there's more.... It also allows seamless transfer of content onto your PSP, with the possibility of watching live content on there too.

If this all seems too cool to be true, just watch the video!

Freeview STB Advice

I came across an interesting article on the London Times website. It's a review of six different Freeview set-top boxes that are currently on the market in the UK - three PVRs and three receiver-only boxes. Interestingly, it includes a Setanta branded box (actually made by Sagem). Freeview viewers now have the option of seeing live Premier League football at home, since the new sports channel, Setanta, managed to win part of the rights package. The service costs £10 per month, and does requrie a box with a card slot, but it does mean you can avoid signing up for the more expensive satellite or cable packages.

The full article is here:
http://tinyurl.com/yr9cjz

Small Screen, Small Price

I found an even cheaper portable DVB-T receiver/screen. Similar to the one mentioned in an earlier post, this has a 3.5" LCD and is fully specced for DVB-T reception.

This one is available for about €80 direct from the manufacturer in China.

Here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/2xjm83

DVB-T for the PS3

Interesting news from New Zealand where a Sony exec has been quoted as saying that they hope to be able to provide a DVB-T tuner for use with Playstation 3 consoles by the time the terrestrial Freeview service launches there. That service is due to launch early in 2008, so this is something that could become available quite soon. The PS3 is already USB enabled, so one can presume that it wouldn't be so difficult to add the necessary software to the box. The question is, how long before we see this in Europe too?

(It's worth noting that DVB-T in New Zealand will be launched using MPEG-4 video coding from the start.)