iPlayer on the TVonics DVRs, IPTV on Freeview

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while, since the PR people for TVonics kindly send me one of their DTR-HD500 units to play with (I’ve previously looked at the Z500HD for RegHardware.)

Both units have essentially the same software and UI; the difference with the HD500 is that it’s in a rather more stylish case, which you’ll either appreciate or think “That’s just bonkers!”

TVonics DTR-HD500 - unconventional styling

Both models include a two port HDMI switch, so you can connect a games console and DVD player, for example, as well as the DVR, even if you only have the one HDMI port on your TV; unlikely as it may seem to the more techy amongst us, there are still a lot of people out there who will have a shortage of HDMI ports on older TVs.

I won’t go over the main points of the TVonics kit in too much detail – read my review on RegHardware for that – but it’s a fairly straightforward interface that perhaps verges on the bland, but certainly won’t frighten people who are not used to digital TV.

The latest updates to the products add support for IPTV services, including the BBC iPlayer, thanks to support for the latest D-Book version, including the MHEG Interaction Channel.

That means that, essentially, when you’re watching a BBC channel on Freeview, you can press the red button on the remote, and you’ll get iPlayer as one of the options on the menu.

iPlayer on Freeview HD - just press Red

As you can see, it’s much the same implementation as you’ll get on a Freesat box; easy enough to find your way around with the remote control, but lacking some of the fancier touches found on the dedicated apps used by some manufactuers, like the one on Panasonic’s VieraCast, which I talked about recently over on RegHardware. However, this is what the BBC provides, not TVonics themselves, so it’ll be common across a lot of Freeview HD boxes over the coming months.

That’s not all that’s added by the latest software update, however. If you’ve browsed the upper reaches of the Freeview HD programme guide recently, you’ll have seen that, past the porn section, starting at channel 110, there are several new channels listed.

These are IPTV channels, which work using the MHEG-IC functionality on Freeview HD boxes. You can tune in to them on any box, but you’ll see a screen something like this if you do:

If your receiver doesn't support the IPTV channels, you'll probably see a message a little like this

On the TVonics – assuming it’s connected to the network, which is pretty much plug-and-play using an ethernet cable (a wireless adaptor is also available, but I’ve not had one to play with) – then you’ll see the station logo (‘Sports Tonight’ on channel 112, for instance) followed by message ‘Attempting to start video’ and then the picture will appear.

Sports Tonight, on Freeview channel 112

If I had to describe the picture quality, I’d say “VHS”; it’s hard to know if it could be better or not – certainly my broadband connection is more than fast enough, so the limitations are to do with the channel itself, and how much bandwidth it wants to pay for. Also, in the screenshot above, the programme was doing an interview via Skype, so it’s not exactly a fair example of what’s possible.

Some may, no doubt, be wondering why Freeview bandwidth is being taken up by minority channels, but the good news is that these channels really aren’t having much impact. All that has to be arranged is a slot in the EPG, and a very small amount of data, which essentially just provides the loading screen and the logo. The channel then points to the IPTV stream, if your box understands it, and all the programme content is delivered over the internet.

It’s obviously a lot cheaper for channels to get on air like this, and as more TVs come with Freeview HD and D-Book 6.2.1 support, we can expect to see more of this sort of content, including paid events and subscription services, helping Freeview fight its corner against other TV services.

For those who are curious, there’s a reasonable amount of buffering, it seems – it took five seconds from unplugging the network cable in the back of the TVonics before the channel was affected.

Dolby transcoding for Icecrypt T2400

Owners of the Icecrypt T2400 will be pleased to hear that a new firmware update is being tested at the moment, which will add Dolby digital transcoding to the unit.

In my original review, that was one of the main points against it, so if this works well, it will be very good news for users.

I hope to start testing the update in the next couple of days, and will post more about it next week.

Remotely viewing the Echostar Freesat box

My review of Echostar’s Freesat recorder is over on RegHardware, but I thought I’d add a few more words and some extra screens here.

First, the connectivity side of this was very straightforward – I fully expected configuration problems with remote viewing, but there weren’t any. While I can’t promise it’ll work fine for everyone, I did access it in fairly challenging circumstances.

The box was connected to my Apple Airport Express powered network; that puts it on a private network, behind NAT, and I didn’t so any special configuration of the Airport. The Airport itself has a public IP address, but is behind a firewall in the router, which is set up to pass limited traffic to the Airport from outside – principally HTTP and some instant messaging. In didn’t add any extra rules for the Sling functionality.

Viewing remotely was done in the Computeractive office, where all the machines are also on a private network, and present a single outgoing IP address. So, effectively, there’s NAT at each end, plus two firewalls – and the streaming still worked without a hitch.

As to picture quality, well if you want to catch up on stuff when you’re away from home, I suppose it’s reasonable enough. The limiting quality is your broadband upload speed – mine is 0.6Mbps, which is reasonable (and faster than quite a lot of people).

So, what’s it like? Well, you can watch BBC One HD remotely, but it won’t look anything like HD; it’s blocky but sit a fair distance from the screen an it’s perfectly watchable. What was more interesting was the difference the quality settings had on the presentation of the on-screen menus, which will be necessary if you want to view recordings remotely. here’s the recording list, with the quality set to ‘Auto’

Menu quality on 'auto' isn't great; click to view full size

Change to ‘Best’ and now the menus are readable; the speed shown in the bottom bar changed from 504 to 536kbps when I did this – and the sound started to break up. But unless you only have a few recordings, you’ll probably need this better quality to be able to work out which file you want to play:

At 'Best' quality, you can read on screen displays, but the sound broke up

Finally, one last pic; I mentioned in the review how bright the front panel lights were, and the Sling indicator, which comes on during remote access is particularly bright, and annoying – that arch of LEDs cycles off and on. This is one you’ll probably want to disable via the menus, if you’re at home when someone else is accessing the box.

All the LEDs are bright, but especially the remote access indicator

Showing the workings

Over on Register Hardware, they’ve just published a piece I wrote about how far away from an HD TV you should be sitting. The answer is fairly simple, and not really much of a surprise, but we decided to start with the figures from some BBC research and work it out for ourselves, from first principles.

There are a few figures in the feature, and I thought that (since I was taught at O level maths) it would be a good idea to show how we got there.

First up, I said the height of a screen, H, is given using this formula:

How did I get there? Pythagoras. If the screen is a standard 16:9 ratio, and we call D the diagonal, then the screen is 9x high and 16x wide. Thanks to the Greeks we know that

Which we can rewrite as:

And we already know that the height, H, is 9x, which gives us the original formula.

The next bit required some trigonometry, and my memory was jogged by someone on the office who did maths a lot more recently than me, with the phrase ‘SOHCAHTOA.’

We know (from the BBC research, and other sources) that the eye can see detail that covers 1 minute of arc, or 1/60^th of a degree. Imagine a triangle touching the screen, one pixel high, with the eye a distance d away, along the middle axis of the triangle.

I’d draw a diagram, but I’m rubbish at those. We can make this into two right angle triangles, dividing along that axis, so now the height is half a pixel, the side at right angles to the screen is d, and the angle at the other end is 1/120^th of a degree.

SOHCAHTOA tells us that the tangent of the angle is the ratio of the opposite side (half a pixel height) to the adjacent side (the distance from screen to eye), so we can say

We know that the pixel height is 1/1080^th of the screen height H, so we can say the distance at which you can view the screen, and a pixel will cover 1 minute of arc at your eyeball (d) is

We’ve already worked out what H is equal to, further up the page, and tan(1/120) is a constant too. So, working all that out, we can substitute the values to come up with

And to allow for people starting with a screen size in inches, and wanting a distance in metres, we use the factor 0.0254, which results in this formula for the viewing distance (d, in metres) from a particular screen size (D, in inches):

Swapping that round, to start with the viewing distance and find out the screen size you need gives the final formula in the article:

You can, as one of the readers has pointed out, simplify this a bit further if you want, but then it wouldn’t look so scientific, would it?

TVonics DTR-Z500HD review update

As I mentioned in my recent piece on choosing a Freeview HD recorder, I’ve been playing with the TVonics DTR-Z500HD; I omitted to update it with the link to my review on RegHardware though.

I confess to one mistake in the review – corrected in the comments – which was not originally noticing the EPG genre browse/search functionality. In fairness, this is partly the way things are labelled on screen, with the colour keys used for some functions, and the |<< and >>| icons at bottom left and bottom right not labelled. It isn’t immediately clear that these provide access to an extra screen of functions for the colour keys, which includes the search option. Still, I shouldn’t have made the mistake, so many apologies.

The TVonics EPG does have search - but it's not immediately obvious where to find it

I think the photo shows the problem – on the left, a quick glance may make you think the |<< button is actually PgUp, and on the right >>| isn’t labelled at all. Perhaps ‘More…’ would be a suitable label.

On the whole, I think the TVonics has a pretty reasonable interface, it’s pretty straightforward, though a little on the sparse side. Mostly that works well, and means menus don’t look too scary, but it sometimes has its downside. For another example, here’s the screen when you set a recording:

Setting a timer on the TVonics

The screen gives you all the information you need, without clutter, but that grey box always covers the whole of the centre of the screen, with options below, right at the bottom. Personally, I think that large space makes things less obvious; while there’s a reminder to press Blue for Series, the Red button for HD is tucked away in the corner.

I know there are design reasons for always having that box the same size, regardless of the name of the programme, but I think from a usability point of view, I’d prefer to see it shrunk to fit, with the colour keys indicated clearly, right below the message about the recording being set.

Of course, once you’ve been using the box for a while, this sort of thing will become second nature, just like on other boxes I’ve learned to press the Record button, then down to select series, and tricks like that. But for the casual user, or someone just coming to a box fresh, it can make it a little less straightforward.

A good performer

None of this is to detract, however, from the fact that the TVonics is a pretty good box; it’s an affordable price, has the all-important Dolby Digital output – and a fix for a bug I found in that while testing appeared very quickly from the guys at TVonics – and isn’t so laden with extra features and complexity that it will confuse the less tech-savvy members of the family.

I still wish it had folders for organising recordings though…

I’ve just written up a review for Computeractive, by the way, which should be published soon.

Choosing a FreeviewHD recorder

I’ve just finished reviewing the TVonics DTR-Z500HD Freeview HD recorder for Register Hardware; it should be published in the next week or so. I can’t tell you exactly what I thought before then (after all, they pay me for my opinion), but I thought it’s worth raising some questions that people will have to think about when they head out to buy something like this, because there isn’t really a single product that ticks absolutely all the boxes.

I’ve looked at four ‘pure’ FreeviewHD recorders, by which I mean units that record only to a hard drive, and also a Panasonic one that can burn DVDs. There are some interesting new models coming along, which I hope to look at including the new Sony, which is the first model to be certified with all the necessary software for the BBC iPlayer via Freeview.

So, it’s worth taking a look at what you’ll find from the various products that are out there, and the key ways in which they differ. I’m not necessarily intending to direct people towards a specific product, but rather to explain the things you might need to consider when you buy, so you can choose the best product for your needs.

It’s worth stressing at this point that many manufacturers will tell you that something “is planned for a future firmware update.” It can be tempting to make your decision based on such statements, but do try to check them first, and make sure they really have come from a reliable source, and not just wishful thinking on a forum somewhere. The best advice, really, is always to buy a product for what it does now, rather than what you hope it might do at some later date, if there’s an update to it.

Under consideration

I’m going to refer to five products here, to give you an idea of the sort of breadth of functionality you might come across; four are ones I’ve tested myself – the Humax HDR-Fox T2, Icecrypt T2400, TVonics DTR-Z500HD, and DigitalStream DHR8205. The final one is the new Sony SVR-HDT500. I’m purposefully leaving aside the Panasonic disc burning kit – it’s not really in quite the same class as these others.

All of these products have differing degrees of functionality, but you can pick them all up for between £200 and £300, give or take a bit. The DigitalStream and TVonics are at the cheaper end of the range, the Sony is more or less in the middle, and the Humax and Icecrypt come in at the top of the range (that’s assuming a 500GB disk; some are available with different sizes; if you want to know how that relates to recording time, read this article).

Key differences

All the recorders have their own little quirks and differences, which I’m not going to enumerate here; you’d do best to read the reviews for more insight on that. But there are also big functional differences that might make quite a difference to what you want to buy, so that’s what I’ll look at here.

BBC iPlayer is one of those; only two of the products have it available – the Humax and the Sony. In the case of the Sony (and it will roll out to future kit, as I mentioned here) it’s provided by supporting the iPlayer on the red button services, so you press Red while watching any BBC TV channel and select it from the menu. On the Humax, it’s via their own TV portal, which also provides access to Sky Player – and it’s the only kit so far that will let you access Sky content that way. Some of the others may get iPlayer via red button later – but remember what I said about updates.

Dolby Transcoding (a favourite topic on this site) isn’t universally supported; of the products I’m talking about but the IceCrypt have it at the moment, though on the Sony it’s apparently not available via HDMI. Is this important to you? Only you can tell, though to keep things in perspective, so far it’s just a few HD programmes that broadcast with surround. All newer kit should have it, but I’d still advise checking exactly how much support there is.

Some people just want a recorder that lets them watch and record TV. Others want it to be able to view other things, like movies they’ve downloaded, or photos. The Humax can play media over your home network; the others don’t – but the IceCrypt lets you copy files to it via the network, and then view them. The others will let you view photos from a USB drive, and sometimes play MP3 files, but that’s as far as it goes.

How much TV do you watch? That might sound a silly question, but it can be important. Most of the kit I’ve mentioned is clever enough to let you watch a third channel while you’re recording two others, a trick made possible by the way digital TV works. But the TVonics doesn’t. Some people won’t be bothered, but others will find that pretty limiting.

Subtle shades

Those are the main differences you’ll find, really – is surround sound supported, is iPlayer available, can you view files stored on your home network. But of course there will be more subtle things too, like the interface, and how you can organise recordings (the TVonics, for example, just has one list, and no folders), or whether you can browse the programme guide by genre, or even search by name.

Some of those things might sound like things you’d never do, but it’s worth thinking about them, because they can be the little things that will make using a PVR a completely different way of watching TV, as I tried to explain here. Only you know which will really be important to you, but I hope I’ve pointed out some of the key areas where products may differ from one another, even though they seem superficially similar.

EU court decision could cut price of PVRs

For those who didn’t spot it, last week the excellent Broadband TV News site carried a report about a ruling from the European Court of Justice which may have implications for the pricing of PVRs – the hard disk recorders that many people are using for satellite and terrestrial services like Freeview, Freesat and Sky.

Until now, these have been classified as recording apparatus, and so attract a rate of duty of 13.9% when they’re imported into the EU, which of course makes them a little more expensive in the shops.

The ECJ has ruled that they should be reclassified as set top boxes with a communications function, which exempts them from duties (and that, ‘communications function’ element is why, for example, the iCan EasyHD Freeview HD set top box has a modem port on the back; it’s cheap to add, and reduces the import costs).

How prices work

Of course, the fact that the duty may not have to be paid won’t necessarily reduce prices – it could just be absorbed into the profit margin by distributors or retailers, and eventually eaten away by inflation over time, so don’t get too hopeful about a price drop yet.

It’s also worth looking at how things like this affect the pricing. Let’s suppose that a product costs a nice neat £100 to manufacture and ship to the UK.

Import duties of 13.9% take the cost at the point of import to £113.90. If we assume that the distributor of the product takes just 5% margin – out of which they’ll be promoting the product to retailers, perhaps advertising it, and handling repairs, warranty and so forth – the price that they can offer to retailers is £119.60.

According to people I’ve spoken with, some of the large retailers may demand a margin of 30%; sometimes they’ll work backwards from a retail price-point that they have in mind and say “We want to sell this at £179.95” so you have to sell it to us at a price that gives us 30% margin. But for this simple comparison, let’s assume that they just add 30% margin on, taking the final price to £155.47, but that’s before VAT is added, so the final price to the customer is £186.57, for a product that cost £100 at the point of import.

How much difference does the duty change make? If we assume everything else is the same, then the price after VAT is £163.80, or over £20 on £100 of imported product, so not to be sniffed at. And, of course, most PVRs are starting at around the £200 mark, or even higher, so potentially, there could be even larger savings.

Imbalance of power

Incidentally, going back to the point I made about large retailers having a price point in mind, if they did impose that price, then what happens is that the distributor – especially for smaller brands, who won’t have the same power as the large retailers, who can simply decide to drop the product – will be forced to cut their margin. With the figures I’ve given for the example with duty and a retail price of £179.95, that means they’d have to offer large retailers the product for £115.35, equivalent to a margin of 1%.

And after this duty change – which of course most punters won’t hear about – they could continue to sell at that hypothetical price, and if they paid the distributor his full 5% margin, the retailer would have a margin of 42.8%. Or, they could drop the price to £159.95, maintain their margin and the squeeze on the importer, and boast about having cut prices by £20.

This, of course, happens all over the retail world, not just in electronics – just ask a farmer!