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Digital entertainment platform Netgem TV appears to have responded to British company Manhattan TV’s recent launch of Aero (here), which is a budget friendly (£69.99) 4K set-top-box that supports the new broadband-based live TV streaming service – Freely, by dropping the price of their own rival PLEIO box back from £ to its original launch price of £99.
Until a few short months ago there weren’t any streaming set-top-boxes with support for Freely, but over the past few months we’ve seen a bunch of new kit enter the market, including at the premium end with the Humax FHR-6000T (Aura EZ 4K Freely Recorder) for £249.
By comparison, neither Netgem TV’s PLEIO (retail via Amazon – affiliate link) nor Manhattan TV’s Aero are designed to fully record TV shows. Both are fairly standard but capable set-top-boxes with Freely support, while the PLEIO also ships with the added bonus of 12 months subscription to their premium content service (you don’t have to keep the subscription after it ends); this normally costs £9.99 per month. The PLEIO subscription includes access to 250+ Cloud Games and 150+ extra channels.
Netgem TV previously had to raise the price of PLEIO due, we understand, to issues with the rising cost of RAM (system memory) and other components. At the time of writing, RAM costs remain high and yet the company has now been able to drop their price back down to £99 and while still retaining the inclusive subscription offer. This is said to be part of a special “Valentine’s offer“, but it could also be seen a response to competition.