Freeview HD will deliver new IPTV channels this month

Dozens of new television channels are coming to Freeview this month, thanks to clever use of the MHEG standard and the connectivity already built into every Freeview HD box. The channels are already appearing on Freeview boxes – at 110, 111 and 120 in the EPG – but rather than broadcasting video streams those channels contain …

[Pete 43]

w00t

does this mean more: shopping, gambling, stupid quizzes & re-runs of "Only fools..."

[Steve Evans]

Re: w00t

Oh if only they did some good reruns!

Unfortunately it seems we are doomed to premium rate phone in shows of all varieties scattered across all the channels. This even infects the original 5 terrestrial as soon as it approaches midnight, leaving nothing but BBC1 and 2 even vaguely worth watching.

[Jon Press]

So, Vision IPTV can do this...

... for every Freeview HD box while the BBC's iPlayer is only turning up on a box-by-box basis. The BBC needs to rethink that one.

Whether this will actually make any money remains to be seen but we could do with more initiatives of this kind. A whole bunch of separate content portals each on a different "channel" sounds like it might be sub-optimal in the long term - presumably this is where YouView see their role. Having an alternative outside the cosy cartel of traditional broadcasters can't be a bad thing, thougn.

[Nigel Whitfield.]

Not exactly ...

The BBC is rolling out their service, and working with manufacturers to test, and certify kit, to ensure a consistent experience, and to help make sure kinks are ironed out.

Vision's service won't actually work with every Freeview HD box, because there are some out there that, despite it now being in the spec, don't have the MHEG-IC that's needed for these services.

It became mandatory in version 6.2.1 of the D-Book spec, and the first box certified to pass that was a Sony model, earlier this year. Freeview HD kit that predates that may not fully support MHEG-IC, or in some cases that I know of, probably won't support it at all.

I suspect that if you look at the small print, Vision will qualify the claim to work on all Freeview HD kit somewhere. Given that it won't work on absolutely all kit, and the relative profiles of the BBC and Vision, I think the Beeb are probably right to be cautious - I can just imagine the shit-storm if they were to say "every Freeview HD box can get iPlayer" if that weren't actually true.

There are other changes in 6.2.1, which I wrote about here: http://gonedigital.net/2011/04/18/the-magic-number-6-2-1/

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeview, Paid for Subscription services, Broadband use...

Isn't there a Trade Descriptions Act case looming, here? Freeview bandwidth is already being consumed by subscription service providers like UK Gold, ESPN and Sky Sports 1 & 2 - Not really a 'free to view' platform, is it?

When was it sold to the the general UK public that you Go Digital, using HD Ready TVs that then could receive HD 'off-air' but then didn't, and now, to join Freeview only to then find that you're likely to have to do what you've tried to avoid doing by NOT becoming or by ceasing to be a Sky subscriber?

So the new Services (Vision et al) will use your broadband connection to augment content delivery - How many people are geared for that? How will people's Broadband 'GB per month' allocations be affected? Or is this another excuse to 'augment' those charges, too, to the detriment of the British public?

[Nigel Whitfield.]

HD Ready never meant 'off air HD'

HD Ready has only ever meant that sets can display an HD picture via a suitable input; it has never meant that people could receive HD broadcasts - there was an entirely separate logo for that, the 'HD TV' logo.

[SImon Hobson]

Didn't stop if being 'sold' like that though

>> HD Ready has only ever meant that sets can display an HD picture via a suitable input; it has never meant that people could receive HD broadcasts

But that subtle distinction was never explained to most people - so yes, there are a lot of people who thought they were buying TVs capable of showing Freeview HD because the sale-droids were more happy taking the commission than putting them right. That, of course, assumed the sales droids even knew themselves.

[DJGM]

Freeview is still a free part of DTT.

Nope ... the Trade Descriptions Act is not being infringed at all.

Freeview (and Freeview HD) are only part of the complete DTT offerings. DTT stands for "Digital Terrestrial Television" btw. DTT is the platform, upon which Freeview, Freeview HD and TopUp TV stands.

While there is still enough bandwidth available, any mixture of free and non-free services can exist on the DTT platform alongside each other.

[Richard Lloyd]

Is it channel 112 or 120?

Logically, it would suggest that the third channel involved is 112, but you mention channel 120 at the start and 112 in the middle - so which is it? I hope my 8320HD (which has Freeview HD, wired and wireless connections) will see this stuff - I presume no firmware update would be needed? I bet most of the free content is going to be rubbish though...

[frank ly]

Bruce Springstein sang about this:

"There was fifty-seven channels and nothing on."

[Death_Ninja]

More like Pink Floyd

"Got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V."

[RSW]

not a good idea for most people

I can see alot of people getting nasty emails from there ISP after pluging in these and not realising the amount of download needed

or the complaining that it won't work properly as they don't have a fast enough connection

[AndrueC]

Ha ha!

Glad I'm with BeThere then. 12Mb/s of throughput and I can run it flat our 24/7 without a squeak and without it slowing down. A shame really that I can find so little of interest beyond a few web sites and the occasional email :-/

[Matthew]

Freesat

Does this extend to FreeSat?

[RegGuy]

You mean F R E E sat?

Ah, a second chance. Repeat after me: FREE, FREE, FREE, FREEsat. FREE, FREE, FREE, FREEsat. FREE, FREE, FREE, FREEsat.

In other words that means free, Free, FREE, ***FREE***!

In other words the money in my pocket stays in my pocket.

It was sold as buy once, and *never* pay any ongoing charges.

So let me repeat free(tard), Free(tard), FREE(tard) ***F R E E (tard)***

I hope my message is clear.

[Penguin -- coz I've never paid an OS licence since Linux came out.]

[I understand now]

Local tv

Does anyone, and I mean ANYONE think this is even worth the effort?

[Tom 260]

I'd rather..

they sort out some of the priorities they give to channels, I receive most of the Freeview channels except those on the weakest multiplex here, so I miss out on ITV4, but I do get ITV1+1 and ITV2+1, which I don't need as I have a PVR...

[Jim Morrow]

too wrong for words

> I do get ITV1+1 and ITV2+1, which I don't need as I have a PVR...

shouldn't you have said "which i don't need because they're worthless mind-numbing shit"?

[tony72]

RE: Local tv

"Does anyone, and I mean ANYONE think this is even worth the effort?"

Depends. People seem to think the clusterturd of pointlessness known as YouTube is worth bringing to every device in existence with a display. Can it be any worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

"clusterturd of pointlessness "

gets you an upvote

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow

My gress is that the service will be SLOOOOOW. Why has every set to box been getting steadily slower and slower since I changed my analague cable box?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollox

I know HD eats more bandwidth. But surely HD is nothing special. It's the same leap as 405 lines was to 625 (colour) lines. It was just an upgrade in the quality of the broadcast. Back then the public were not held to ransom, sure you had to buy a new set but the broadcast cost no more. All I hear is 'HD must be treated with kid gloves and protected (HDCP)' or a £10 premium added to view it. Now this crap.

It's really time for the public to see HD for what it is and refuse to pay more for it. In a few years it will be the norm. Stop lining these gold digger pockets.

[Dabooka]

So I get a Freeview HD box....

and I have to use my internet connection (which is SHIT and despite a max of about 2.5 meg drops out daily) to get "extra" channels? Seriously? And extra channels of what I'm sure will be utter tosh?

FFS....

[Anonymous Coward]

duuuuuh

so, don't watch them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, but you're somewhat missing THE point

I use iPlayer a lot, is that Freeview too? No, because a) it's not transmitted and b) it's got a cost. QVC is Freeview because it's both of these (don't bang on about the TV licence either). I don't watch it but it is Freeview. Wasting anything on a system that forces people to download TV is just bollocks, a lot of people still have small or limited and slow ADSL packages by choice. Epecially for local TV; as has been said, does anyone really see the point?!

Just close some of the other shit down and let's see C5 in HD or something.

[Bluenose]

Now my Sony TV is already Internet connected

And over the weekend I watched a steamed movie on it. Quality was good (no hitches with the stream) and while not HD it was still pretty good in SD.

My big complaint, the price of the film at £3.49 was more than my local DVD shop would have charged me to rent the DVD for two nights. Interestingly I looked at a couple of other steaming video suppliers (Blinkbox and Lovefilm) and get the impression that there is not really a competitive market in this business model yet. Perhaps this new solution might help to drive that.

[Anonymous Coward]

"steaming video"

I've seen a few of those, eh!, eh?, eh!?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeView

Not free any longer, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh

More turd on the TV to flick through.

On demand is where it should be at, instant 'on' for the programmes you actually *want* to watch, rather than continuous channel flicking.

Fact is, most discerning viewers just download the content they want to watch. Yep, it's illegal, but it's what a great deal of people *want* from their media consumption. As nobody is actually providing that right now, it's self service baby.

A quick jump onto a torrent site, after browsing various review sites to see what's hot and what's not, choose your poison, download like a dirty old freetard and watch at your leisure.

Simple fact is, if a company was providing *quality* on demand viewing at affordable prices, people would jump all over it.

For many geeks, a custom digibox solution is the way forward - grab a torrent onto the custom digi-box, file it away, watch at my leisure. No adverts, only stuff I actually want to watch, a *massive* selection. Or just stream some net TV / music and in blighty, record only what you want to watch from Freeview onto the same custom digibox.

MythTV. BOXEE & the interweb - that's where TV is at for me - free to watch what I want when I want.

[Lifeforms]

Need better broadband ultimately

It's quite nice what these fancy TV's can do with their inbuilt everything nowadays (no I'm not an old git, but haven't bought a tv in over 12 years (due to not using one).

However the age old question is the majority of the broadband in this country is simply not suitable for it down to the silly "peak" limits put on. A program a day might just be enough to take it over, along with the regular usage of it in normal circumstances. I can just see how many people are going to go over and find out they've got a bit more of an internet bill than they thought.

I'd like freeview over internet if I had a decent broadband package, as I simply can't get a signal in my flat any more, landlord wont do me an outside external aerial. But I come close to my peak limit by watching a program, or two half hour ones daily off the non-download catch up sites.

We need a restructuring service where things like internet TV (through certain sites/devices) are simply ignored in the download limits. Then things might actually take off.

[Martin Glenn]

No Support

I noticed some of these channels on my Samsung last night after a retune, The only issue for me is there is no network connectivity on my TV, by that I mean no NIC port or network support, So I guess that I will not be using them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ofcom control?

Will streamed TV channels fall under Ofcom's rules and regs? Or will they have a more relaxed attitude to censorship and allow proper xxx content - as is the case with any other internet streamed video?

If Ofcom do impose the rules on these new channels then it could bring about a dangerous precedent re net neutrality.

Pic related obviously.